Civility
by division-ten
Summary: Ratchet is intelligent (mostly) civilized (partially) and ethical (usually). It doesn't change the fact that, at heart, he's still a giant kitty. (series of one shots and shorts)
1. Chapter 1

As a proud servant (owner? Hah, **_nope_**.) to one yellow-and-brown striped cat, I really enjoy Jak Cooper the Lombax's stories about lombaxes having cat traits. I've taken Jak's prompt titles from Felis Lombaxus: Lombax and am writing my own shorts with the same titles, but entirely different results.

Some will actually be cat related… but not all!

Enjoy!

* * *

 ** _Sleeping_**

The only time Clank ever saw Ratchet as something resembling an animal was when his best friend slept. He stripped down to everything but a pair of shorts, puffed out his fur, and paced on all fours before curling up to sleep, ears drooped and tail over snout.

He also needed to be particularly careful to secure himself in the tiny cargo bay in Aphelion before Ratchet turned on autopilot for the night when they were starbound. Ratchet had a tendency to grab and curl tightly around anything in his vicinity… blankets, the small trashcan in the dashboard… **_Clank_**.

The first few nights after the incident in the Great Clock, however… Clank made sure to sit within Ratchet's reach, and Ratchet didn't even wait to fall asleep, wordlessly scooping Clank into his arms before trying to turn in for the night.

The infernal snoring in his audio receptor was worth it.

* * *

 ** _Scratching Walls_**

Ratchet, one afternoon, pulled out a sharp razor and went into a small corner of their Veldin garage. Clank had seen this particular portion before, with its deep scratches in the walls, and strange markings to one side. This time, he stealthily followed Ratchet to the corner in question, something of a moot point with Ratchet's impeccable hearing. Ratchet backed up to the wall, and pressed the razor to it right above his head, scratching a deep gash into the cork.

Satisfied, he took out a small penknife, and etched in something alongside the mark.

"Marking your change in height?" Clank asked. Ratchet wasn't even startled, and pocketed the tools.

"Once a year. I've grown by six ceticubits!"

 ** _Once a…_**

"Is today when you celebrate your birthday?" Clank asked uneasily. "You should have said something sooner."

Ratchet shrugged, and Clank glared at him.

"You are to wait here, Ratchet. I need to go make a few commlink calls."

Clank hurried up to the living quarters, scrambling to contact Talwyn, Al, Sasha, and Skidd. They could start passing the message on to the rest.

* * *

 ** _Ham, Beef, Chicken, Etc._**

"You are **_not_** taking all of those transmorpher guns, Ratchet. It will be harder to leaf through your mat-compressor interface if it becomes clogged up with too many items. "

Ratchet cocked his head, looking over his arsenal to figure out what guns and tools to lock into the quick select function. He set aside most of the transmorpher rays, picking out the Boarzooka, Morph-o-Ray, and Armoogeddon.

"So, what do you think, pal? Ham, beef, or chicken?"

* * *

 ** _Purring_**

If there was one thing Ratchet would never, ever admit, it was that he really liked being pet. It was warm, comforting, soothing. Often, if he wanted to be stroked behind an ear, or have the poof on the end of his tail brushed out, he'd take a hot bath, play a vid-comic, feign exhaustion partway through, and curl up lazily on the couch, pretending to have fallen asleep. Eventually, Clank would get up from reading his book, or playing holo-chess, and start brushing Ratchet out with a wire bristle brush, humming along when Ratchet inevitably began to purr.

xXx

Clank hated messes. Not for himself, not really, but on behalf of his organic friend. Messes led to bacterial infections, pests, mold… things to kill or cause harm to an organic in some way. So, when he noticed that Ratchet shed, he'd tried to brush out the fur before it turned into small piles on the floor- the natural oils in the fiber a literal smorgasbord for fleas and other tiny critters. But Ratchet would always bat him away while awake, so Clank just took to sweeping up regularly.

Eventually, Clank noticed Ratchet would deliberately sprawl out on the couch in nothing but shorts after a bath and a gaming session. He didn't want to do something his best friend hadn't given him permission to do, especially while unconcious, but if there was one thing Clank would never, ever admit, it was that he knew Ratchet was still awake on the couch, awaiting the attention.

* * *

 ** _Meowing_**

" ** _MROW_**!" Ratchet screeched, irritably, flicking away his tail and turning around to see who had literally yanked on his spine.

"Mister Kitty?" a small Fongoid asked, looking up pleadingly at the lombax. Ratchet's face immediately softened, and he squatted to talk at eye level to the small child.

"Hey, kid," he said cheerfully, as he swayed his tail back and forth checking for a pulled muscle and wincing slightly. "Don't pull people's tails, okay? That hurts."

The fongoid began to sniffle.

"Whoa, wait. It's okay. Just don't do that again, yeah? Now what can I do for you?"

"Lost."

"What village do you live in?"

"Terrapi."

"Okay, why don't you get on my back? I'll bring you home," Ratchet replied, patting his shoulder. The child stepped on, and Ratchet hooked his arms around her legs to keep her stable. Clank was off getting supplies from another village in Zolar Forest, so Ratchet didn't mind the detour.

The kid weighed less than Clank did, anyway.

* * *

 ** _Lombax Nip_**

Ratchet awoke to the mechanical sounds of beeping, something he'd increasingly been used to living with Clank. What was new, however, was the oxygen mask covering his face, and the burning sensation around his eyes.

"Mrph?" he muttered, before realizing a tube was down his throat, and two more in his nose. He relaxed a little; hospitals meant he'd done something **_exceedingly_** stupid, but he would be all right. A small alarm sounded, and, as he expected, Clank heli-pack hovered up and onto the gurney.

"You are going to be bed-bound for at least three more days, Ratchet," Clank said matter-of-factly. "Do you remember what happened?" he asked, as he carefully ran the program to remove the plastic tube from Ratchet's throat, but kept the smaller ones in his nostrils inside his snout.

"Not… really. I remember the benefit dinner on Luminopolis for stopping Ephemeris… what did I do?"

"For once, nothing. Your food had been drugged. Doctor Croid and Doctor Binklemeyer have been keeping an eye on you."

"Ugh," was all Ratchet could reply, before Croid himself came into view.

"Balbalis nox," Croid said, holding up a sealed bag of strange red leaves. "In small, controlled doses, a pain relief and mild hallucinogenic to lombaxes. Used in various religious ceremonies, and pain management for some chronic disorders. Tasteless and odorless unless smoked, and only affects felids."

"Catnip," Ratchet replied.

"Basically," Croid replied. "Someone laced the soup itself with the leaves' oil. I actually don't think you were the intended target, though. There's never been a reported death by overdose to lombax-kind, no matter how much had been taken."

"Sasha was supposed to be there, and had to cancel at the last minute…" Clank provided.

"A dose like that would probably kill a Cazar, yes," Binklemeyer interjected.

"Yay, for taking one for the team…" Ratchet mumbled. "Sooooo… what's going to happen to me now?"

"As the majority of the dose is now exhumed from your system… you're going to start having the effects of a regular dose. Hallucinations. Out of body experiences. Extreme taste and smell."

"Joy."

"This may be out of line," Croid cut in over his colleague, "but seeing as you're the last lombax and all- may we record this?"

"Will I remember most of this?"

"I'm not sure."

"Clank, will you blackmail me with this?"

"Most certainly."

"Yeah, sure. Go ahead. I'm sure Tal would want to see the tapes," Ratchet said half-laughing, before everything went fuzzy again.

xXx

Ratchet blinked, and saw an expanse of stars, floating above it all. He was in nothing but a hospital gown, front barely kept closed by the cloth ties.

"So you are my son's closest friend," he heard, from a wise old voice behind him that sounded oddly close to, but not quite like, Croid's.

Ratchet turned and floated down, looking at the purple-skinned creature. "Zoni?" he asked, quizzically.

"Have a seat," the apparition replied, materializing a plush chair from the nothingness.

"You said your son… I never got a good look at you before. You… you're Orvis. And if I remember correctly… I'm high as a kite, so this is a hallucination."

"That's not quite how lombax nip works, you know," Orvus said, grinning.

"I… what now?"

"There's a reason lombaxes don't die from it, Cazars can, and nobody else has any effect at all. Brain chemistry. It… well, it essentially creates a temporary miniature dimension hopping chemical when mixed… its what led your people to inventing a mechanical means for doing so. Some Cazars can't handle it. E-he-he-he-he."

"The Dimensionator… is powered by drugging out?" Ratchet said, squirming a little.

"A replacement for it, actually, but the principle is much the same. Honestly, I am surprised. I did not expect you to end up here… if anything, you should have had some time with the lombaxes before the drug worked its way out of your system."

"I was thinking about Clank before I passed out…" Ratchet replied sheepishly. "Can I bring things out?" he added.

"Well, you aren't naked, are you?" Orvus replied, pulling at the blue garment.

"Back home… well, back on Magnus, where am I?"

"You **_aren't_**. I do hope they aren't too worried when you blinked out of existence."

"Want to go home?" Ratchet asked, looking at his new companion.

"I do think it is about time. E-he-he-he-he. Time! Because I built the Clock, see? Oh, I do slay myself," he replied, grasping Ratchet's hand tightly. "How much did you take, though? We might be stuck here a while."

"That's fine. I think I can wait," Ratchet said smiling. "So… is Clank a Zoni, or…?"

"Oh, my boy, that story, is quite the interesting tale itself. Here, let me start at the beginning…"


	2. Chapter 2

Taking a moment to thank Jak Cooper the Lombax again for letting me use these story prompts. Sorry if I offended you with the use of Lombax Nip, it was one of your own prompts! I'll change it to **_Catnip_** if you prefer. : )

I had multiple requests to turn that short into a longer story… and I think I could write something interesting there, and am mulling some ideas in my head. **Any opinions**? Would you want to read it?

Also, **_two chapters in one day_**! This chapter combines the prompts from chapters two and three of Jak's story. The following chapter combines the prompts from four and five… and then I'm out of prompts.

So, some cat related prompts would be appreciated, if you have suggestions. **_Titles only, please_**. I may not make a cat related story from them (like **_Scratching Walls_** and **_Ham, Beef, Chicken_** from last chapter or **_Laser Pointer_** and **_String_** from this one).

* * *

 ** _Laser Pointer_**

Talwyn didn't know what to expect when she shot the laser across the dome of Apogee Station. She certainly didn't expect Clank's eyes to shine an ominous shade of red and begin flying towards the spot on the crossbeam.

Ratchet heard Clank's propellers start up, whipping his head away from the computer mainframe he was fixing, towards the sound. "Tal! Shut that off! Or wait, don't!"

He hopped over to Talwyn, on the other side of the processor bank, grabbing the pointer from her grease stained palms, and slowly guided the beam of light back down to the floor. Clank followed it dutifully. When he'd landed, and chased after the beam darting slowly on the metal deck, Ratchet turned it off and passed it back.

"What was…?" Talwyn asked, as Clank's optics turned back to a familiar shade of green.

"Blarg microbot override," Clank said, testing out his jaw. "What was the THz of that laser?"

Tal threw the small device to Clank, and he looked it over, speaking in dry sarcasm. "Ah, just what I need. These are becoming consumer use now."

"Can't you disable the failsafe? Or…"

"Blarg laws of robotics," the boys said in unison. "And **_I_** don't know how. I don't want to tamper with his main sisterboard," Ratchet added.

"I had to disable some of Cronk and Zephyr's warbot directives," Tal replied. "At least I can take a look? I won't touch anything unless I am sure I can remove it safely."

"That would be much appreciated, Miss Apogee."

* * *

 ** _Tongue Baths_**

 _Alister held up the tiny, mewling kit, all yellow peach fuzz. Only two weeks old, his eyes were still jammed shut and his stripes had not yet begun to crisscross his tiny body (if he ended up having any, some lombaxes stayed one color their whole lives, but, seeing that both his parents were striped, it was likely he would be as well)._

 _"What do I do?" Alister gruffed out to Kaden and Hikaru._

 _"…lick him clean?" Hikaru replied, cocking one of her ears and grinning._

 _"I can't believe people still do this," Alister grumbled, as he got to work cleaning off his godson, spitting out a mouthful of fuzz. "So who's going to invent synthetic lombax spit?"_

 _"Maybe our son will," Kaden said, laughing._

 _"I meant now, when I could **use** it," Alister groaned, playfully, mid-lick, spiking up the fur on the boy's left ear. The antibacterial properties in their saliva had yet to be duplicated properly in the lab, so parents would still clean their children the old-fashioned way for the first few months of life; it was a high honor to be asked to bathe someone else's' kit._

 _Alister looked down at his handiwork, grinning, before finishing and spiking up the fur on the back of his head into a miniature mohawk, passing the kit to his parents._

 _"Azimuth!" Kaden cried. Hikaru giggled; her son looked like a little lion._

 _"You asked, here you go," he snarked back._

"General Azimuth?" Ratchet asked, waving a hand by Alister's face. "You okay?"

"…yes, Ratchet, I'm fine. So, Ratchet, made any big discoveries so far? Any inventions?"

"Uh, well, it's probably stupid…" Ratchet replied, scratching the back of his neck as he shifted his weight in the new hoverboots.

"Tell me."

"Some electroshock underwear… I did that after one of my friends was getting hit on by some sleazy guys in a bar… someone gets too close and **_bzzzzt_**!"

"That's not stupid at all," Alister replied, nodding his head. The fact that something as… **_unusual_** … as Stunderwear being a Lombax-made invention made a lot more sense.

"And, uh, I kinda figured out how to make synthetic saliva. I found out I'm allergic to regular burn salve, but my own spit healed me up pretty quick. I didn't want to have to lick myself clean, so…"

"You and me both," Alister muttered.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all. Come on, kit, you need to learn how to jump in these."

* * *

 ** _Fleas_**

Ratchet sat naked and wet on the floor of their apartment, smelling strongly of an abrasive alcohol solution rubbed into the fur and skin below. Clank was carefully combing through his fur with his eyes on high magnification. Every so often he'd pull, sharply, and sterilize the hard comb, shaking off miniscule larvae, eggs, and full-sized insects into a container.

Ratchet didn't know whether to purr or cry. He settled on both, knowing Clank wouldn't care.

"If we **_ever_** have to go back to that section of Florana, I am wearing a haz-mat suit," he muttered between strokes of the lice-comb.

* * *

 ** _String_**

"How drunk were these physicists again, really?" Ratchet groaned, pouring through the advanced placement high-school level science textbook that Clank had given him earlier in the week. He'd already breezed through geology, so, when stopping in Igliak, Clank managed to find a well-written tome (in Blargian no less, all the way out in Polaris) for Ratchet to study after he'd discovered Ratchet only had a formal education through middle school.

"It is just a theory, an alternative to standard dark matter. Even if untrue, it does provide a basis for conceptual thought."

Ratchet grumbled, curling himself on the flattened out pilot's seat in Aphelion, as he looked at his alternatives for the day. Better than ancient Lombaxian literature, he mused, as he turned to the next section on string theory.

* * *

 ** _Vacuum Cleaners_**

Ratchet pressed his ears to his skull.

"Not happening," he cried over the din, as Clank turned off the device.

"There has to be **_one_** vacuum in this store that will not give you a migraine," Clank replied, shaking his head, as he (and the even more tired salesman) went down the line of options.

* * *

 ** _Sitting and Staring at Nothing_**

Ratchet sat, staring straight ahead off into the distance in utter silence. A minute was understandable; Ratchet, when entirely stuck on an idea, had a tendency to sit facing a blank wall while he cleared his head to think. A minute, five minutes, were normal, and Clank didn't so much dare as move, because he knew Ratchet could hear his joints squeak ever so slightly.

 ** _This_** was bordering on half an hour.

"Ratchet…?"

Oddly enough, no answer. Clank then noticed the white string coming from Ratchet's ears. Was he listening to something?

Ratchet didn't dislike music, but it wasn't something he went out of his way to simply sit and listen to. He loved the radio in Aphelion while flying, and often hummed his favorites while trekking. But he wasn't the type to simply sit and listen. He didn't have the one-track mind for it.

After a moment, Ratchet pulled the string from out of his ear.

"Deratch dzoi da ic luc?"

"I was just wondering why you were not… Ratchet, was that Lombax?"

Ratchet grinned, holding up a holodisc case. "Dec'nar IRIS da al." **_Got it from IRIS._**

Clank shook his head in amazement. Ratchet still couldn't read written Lombax at all, but… maybe he was simply an auditory learner? "Ratchet," Clank replied, testing to see how much he'd really picked up. "Tak, illa mac rhai da ic." **_I wish you good luck in your study._**

"Meyaha da ic," **_Thank you_** , Ratchet replied, before sticking the headphone back in his ear, smiling and thumping his tail on the floor. Clank squinted back, before hopping off the couch and calling in Ratchet's favorite takeout for dinner that evening.

Ratchet pressed play on the holodisc reader, and strains of a jingle picked up again, before a Lombax announcer, long gone (hopefully to the dimension with the lombaxes, Ratchet mused), resumed his chat. Ratchet was far more motivated to learn by listening to old radio interviews with notable Lombax inventors than regular language lessons, and boy, did IRIS deliver.

"Jar, trahekka doi da ic luc?" **_So, what are you most excited about?_** asked the interviewer.

A pause.

"Kaden?"

"Tanbac loi de ar," **_More than any invention_** , Kaden started, "Trahekka doi reha-sac da ya."

 ** _I'm most excited for my newborn son._**

* * *

 ** _Large Boxes_**

"Ratchet? Ratchet where are you?" a sweet voice asked, piercing through the air. Ratchet curled tighter into the discarded cardboard box in the storage closet, squinting when a flashlight beam blinded him in the eyes. He let out a mewl, and the squat Veldinite lady reached down and pulled him out. Seven years old, and the furball was still barely two feet tall standing upright- she could carry Ratchet comfortably like a domestic crumptofox. Without his clothes on, as he currently was, and covered in his thick winter coat, he did very much resemble a housepet.

Ratchet mewled and cried.

"Who took your clothes?" she asked, simply, scratching Ratchet behind the ear and cooing to calm him down.

"Dunno," he mumbled, sniffling into the warden's shirt. "Went to shower after Teegan threw a mudball." He stopped and looked up, alarmed. "She was aiming at Kody, not me. Kody was pulling my tail again. When I came out, the clothes I had left for myself were gone and the dorm was locked. I even lost my towel."

"Wait here, I'll go unlock the dormitory and get you something to wear."

"I'm bunk six, now," Ratchet supplied helpfully. "And I want my green Qwark shirt."

The warden, Kala, chuckled. "Oh, they gave you the top bunk, did they?"

"Yeah! And they took away the ladder too, so the older boys can't get up and stick my hand in water anymore. **_I_** can climb it just fine," he added proudly.

"I hope you find a family soon, Ratchet, but, if you want, we can see about finding you a new orphanage in the network."

"Please don't," Ratchet pleaded.

"What, why? Do you **_like_** getting teased by the other children?"

"Teegan's nice. You're nice, Miss Kala. The headmiss is nice. I've been in…" he counted off his fingers, "nine orphanages, I think? I haven't had people look up for me before."

"Look **_out_** for, " Kala corrected gently, scratching Ratchet's crown. "But I'm going to go get you some clothes first, and then let's go have some ice cream. Can you wait here for me?"

"As long as it takes," Ratchet replied, jumping back into the cardboard box, settling in.

Kala sighed, and climbed the stairs to the bunks on the top level. Ratchet had had three families interested in him… all turned down by the headmistress already for seeing the kit as less a person than a novelty housepet. Ratchet was more right than he knew; as depressing as it was to consider, this was the best place he could be.


	3. Chapter 3

Hey, I wrote two chapters yesterday, and Fanfiction was not updating. So you may have skipped a chapter if you want to go back and read.

Onwards!

* * *

 ** _Jumping_**

"C'mon, I know we can reach that ledge," Ratchet said, grunting. "I'm jumping, you need to give us a little more thrust, pal."

"I am aware. This does surprise me as well; our combined weight is well below the maximum load bearing capacity."

"Please translate that from nerd."

"We collectively weigh 70 kilos. This is supposed to support up to 200."

"You think Al ripped me off?" Ratchet said, kicking one of the crates by the mag-lev rail station they were using as a makeshift practice area for Clank's new heli-pack.

"It is possible," Clank started, and Ratchet hissed. " ** _However_** ," Clank added, "I think it is far more likely we are not using the device as intended. It is not meant to fly, simply to break a fall."

"Lemme see those instructions," Ratchet replied, snatching the small booklet from Clank's hand, grumbling while reading. "Aw man, just a boost jump and glide? I thought we could **_fly_** with this!"

* * *

 ** _Bells_**

Ratchet's ears perked up to the sound of a soft tinkling noise in the distance.

"Why do you get so excited whenever you hear a bell? It is practically a conditioned response," Clank noted, as he watched Ratchet wolf down a sandwich on the patio of a Kerwan café. He hoped he hadn't been conditioned as a kit in the orphanage; what few stories he was able to glean out of his fuzzy partner were **_not_** happy ones.

Ratchet wiped away aioli from his lower lip. "Bell meant customer," he replied, before diving back into his lunch.

* * *

 ** _Rats_**

Ratchet fitted the old helmet over his face. Oddly, ten years later, the sandmouse communicator still clipped shut, albeit a bit more snugly than he remembered.

"You look ridiculous," Talwyn said, rolling her eyes.

"You called in an expert in pest control, this is what you get," Ratchet replied. "And if you say I look stupid again, I'm doubling my fee. Heroism doesn't come cheap, Tal."

"Oh, no, I'll have to take you out to dinner twice. The horror," Talwyn replied dryly.

Ratchet unhooked his harness for Clank, and wiggled down on all fours into one of the vent shafts in Apogee Station.

"Hey, Clank," he called, testing out the commlink.

"Yes, Ratchet?"

"Race ya to see who can bag more sandmice."

"You are at a distinct advantage. No."

" ** _You_** can get anything in the periphery shafts. I'm too big," Ratchet replied. "And I can only hone in on four at a time with the helmet, anyway."

Clank considered this for a minute. "You have a deal, Ratchet."

"The usual?"

"Agreed."

xXx

"I can't believe there were fifty seven of them. Fifty seven! Blasting through the wires and making a mess," Tal said that evening, over pasta.

"They multiply fast," Ratchet replied. "And they can use parts they find to replicate themselves. Every time I stopped in Batalia, a swarm greeted me. We're going to have to use some of them to repair the station in the morning."

"Extra fee?"

"You know it."

"So, what do you owe Clank, anyway? He beat you, by three."

Ratchet wrinkled his nose. "A full tune up. Oil bath, joint realignment, all that."

"What would he have owed you?" Tal asked curiously.

"Standing on my back with the heatsinks directed downwards. Carrying him all the time is killer."

"Have you ever considered walking with him **_alongside_** of you, except when you need to fly somewhere? You worked great as a team this afternoon."

"I'm used to him watching my back. I don't think I'd want it any other way."

"Back pain or no?"

"Back pain or no."

* * *

 ** _The Vet_**

Ratchet wiggled his nose.

 ** _Antiseptic._**

Was it worth it to crack his eyes open? Slowly, he let his curiosity get the better of him, and cracked a lid. Bright, fluorescent lighting from a long tube overhead.

"For the first time in my life, Ratchet, I am **_very_** glad to see you on my examination table," a light voice said. "You… from what's been going around, today, you've done everyone here quite the service."

"Oh, hi, Doc Hu," Ratchet said weakly, waving a hand limply.

"Last time you were in here, you actually **_fit_** on the table," she chuckled, pointing to the makeshift extension the nurses had rigged up to make the table long enough for him. "Thank goodness it's been a few years since your last major emergency, but you've been dodging checkups, mister."

"Lombaxes grow, who knew?" Ratchet replied, hastily changing the subject and smiling at the ceiling.

"Sit up, furball, I want a better look at the scarring on your back," Doctor Hulia commanded. Ratchet felt the tug of a stiff hand helping him, focusing his eyes downward.

"Clank?" he asked.

"It is good to see you conscious," he replied, pulling gently to help Ratchet sit upright, and sat between Ratchet's legs so the lombax had something to lean into.

Dr. Hulia parted the fur on Ratchet's back, ghosting her hands over the remains of some wounds.

"Thank goodness you've been replacing your nanotech regularly," she said, rubbing Ratchet's back once more to make sure she didn't miss anything. "The scars are healing well, and should dissipate completely. Getting the shrapnel out of you was not a fun task, let me tell you. You should stick around for a bit, though, just to be safe, though I don't really have space for you to stay overnight. The family can pop by the garage after I'm done working, but…"

"I'm good," Ratchet replied, yawning.

"Let me call a hovercar service for you, at least," she replied. "You are not walking or hoverboarding fifteen kliks back up the mesa. Doctor's orders. And if anyone comes around asking if you can come help with the post-Drek cleanup, well, here," she added, procuring a slip with her seal. "No strenuous activity for you for two weeks, minimum. And I want you back here for another checkup before you go running off again."

"Yes ma'am…" Ratchet replied, deflated.

"I've already given Clank some orders on your care. Your back should still be washed and coated in salve daily. Loose bandages. He has a prescription to fill to get something that won't give you an allergic reaction." She gave him a sidelong glance. "I'd say you're free to go, unless you want a biscuit."

"You make me feel like I'm ten, Doc Hu," Ratchet replied, leaning into Clank before sliding himself off the table. "What do I owe you?"

"I think you've already paid, Ratchet," she replied, fondly. "You really have grown up quite a bit in the past few weeks, haven't you? Next time you **_tell me_** before you take one of your ramshackle ships for a test flight, you hear? Well? Biscuit, or no? I have a woman with an owlbear in the waiting room that needs to be de-wormed."

"Sure," Ratchet replied. "I'll take one for the road."

xXx

Ratchet walked slowly, Clank walked alongside instead of being strapped to Ratchet's back, until they got to the street corner to pick up the hovercar Dr. Hulia had paid for. Clank carried an entire jar of the biscuits between his arms, while Ratchet munched on one.

"Just as good as I remember," he said, holding it out. "The car and the visit were one thing, but she gave me the entire jar… she bakes those herself."

"You know, I was a bit worried when the EMTs arrived."

"Why? With my nanotech, I would have healed eventually."

"That was not the concern. It was that they took you to a veterinarian rather than a hospital. I am just glad you were not upset upon wake."

"I've been sent there more times than I can count, when I was little; Veldin doctors don't really know how to treat non-Veldinites," Ratchet replied. "Hulia is practically my mom. If she didn't have three kids of her own, she would have adopted me herself. How do you think a sixteen year old can afford a garage? Or a ship, even if it was crappy and, uh, kinda exploded? She always has a hot meal for me if I need it, and I babysit her youngest from time to time, but… she has animals to treat, and other people to take care of too. It sucks I never got adopted, for real, but, eh. I'll take what I can get. "

" ** _'Take what you can get?'_** Even pet treats?" Clank asked curiously.

"Who are you kidding?" Ratchet replied, laughing, as he watched an orange hovercar pull around to the corner. "The pet treats she makes are **_red_**. **_These_** are for the office workers," he added, biting into the bone-shaped cookie. "They're **_snickerdoodles_**."

* * *

 ** _Hair Balls_**

Kaden awoke to the sounds of rough coughing; rushing to the bathroom immediately. His wife leaned unhappily over the sink, her black hair in a messy ponytail, and her black and white striped ears pulled back away from her face.

"What happened? Post partum sickness?" Kaden asked worriedly. "Do I need to call an amb-"

Hikaru held up a hand, shaking her head, before pointing a finger to the sink. A glob of goo mixed with the unmistakable gold fluff of their newborn sun made a small ball in the drain catch.

"I'll wash Tobi for the next few days," Kaden said, gently, stroking his wife's back with long, gentle glides, before reaching up and scratching her behind the ear.

"Or maybe I can convince Alister to lend a hand again?"


	4. Chapter 4

**_I AM OUT OF PROMPTS. PLEASE GIVE THEM TO ME IN THE COMMENTS._**

Any cat related prompts appreciated!

Also, I have now vaguely tied these shorts to the film cannon, due to Doctor Hulia's family. I kind of like writing her, but if you all think there are too many OCs here, let me know. Ratchet never went into detail about his childhood, other than being an orphan, so… I am having fun filling in the blanks. :)

* * *

 ** _Toilet Paper_**

"Hold still, tin can," Ratchet whispered.

"I am not made of tin, Ratchet, I am an aluminum-carbite al-"

"Geez, Clank, I know. It's an **_expression_**."

"Like furball is an expression?" Clank asked back, innocently. Ratchet rolled his eyes, and continued to twist strands of toilet paper into strips, peeking out the keyhole of the supply closet as Blarg troops marched by.

"Thank goodness they don't have my hearing or smell, or we'd be toast," Ratchet muttered, cutting the toilet paper strand with his teeth, before braiding it into a surprisingly tough rope, side-eyeing Clank and hastily adding, "Also an expression. We'd be **_dead_**. Or I'd be, and you'd be scrap metal. **_Or_** reprogrammed, and I'm honestly not sure which is worse."

Ratchet grumbled under his breath as he finished his handiwork. "I can give you a proper repair when we get back to the ship, pal, but at least with this, you won't have that arm of yours hanging by half a wire," he commented, as he carefully strung Clank's left arm up and through, around his neck axis. "It's not much, but you'll at least be able to puppeteer your own arm by turning your head."

"It **_is_** strange," Clank agreed, as he turned his neck, pulling the elbow joint with it. "It should work for now. I am glad I was able to take that hit instead of… huh."

"What's up?" Ratchet hissed, recognizing that Clank had stopped mid-thought.

"There are cables and strippers here," Clank hummed, pointing with his good hand, something he'd only noticed after being forced to turn his neck. "We should abscond with them at the very least. They are Blarg made, so they should be more compatible with my systems than whatever you can salvage from our Novalian transport."

Ratchet snorted, leaned down, and cut the toilet-paper rope clean through with a bite. "They haven't found us yet, so let me just take care of that arm of yours now."

"But Ratchet, I am in no pain or-"

"Nope, it's getting fixed. No if's, and's, or but's."

"But why?" Clank asked, as Ratchet pulled out the pieces of rope with one hand, and began cutting wire with the other. "It was a crude but entirely serviceable patch job."

"If I can fix a broken arm, I'm fixing it. You may not be in pain but it sure as heck looks uncomfortable to me. Dim your eyes, pal, I can't see the wiring when they're shining in my face…

Just hold still, okay?"

* * *

 ** _Moths_**

Clank felt Ratchet's ears brush along the sensor strip on the back of his dome.

"You have heard something faint," Clank remarked. It was no longer a question to him; Clank understood to trust the organic on matters of hearing, while Ratchet, despite the size of his eyes, trusted Clank with sight.

"Wing flaps. Pretty sure it's some grubsnuckers. I'm going to flip around, mind zooming in on the roof of the cave?"

"Certainly." Ratchet turned around, to face the way they came. "Yes," Clank replied, after a moment. "At least fifty visible. Likely many more."

"Great. Ugh. Okay, we are fighting bugs with bugs," Ratchet replied, scrambling back up the waterfall-soaked rocks the way they came. "There was an old gel pad on that outcropping; if it's still got some juice, can you fly us in low while I drop a few toxic swarm pods?"

"And if it does not?"

"I run in there, drop some swarmers, and run back out like my tail's on fire."

Clank paused to consider any other options, and came up empty, shaking his head (which Ratchet felt in turn, as it rubbed his neck through his armor).

"I have your back."

* * *

 ** _Litter Boxes_**

"There is a dead person and a howling kitten on our doorstep, Joru," Anolise called out.

"Haha, very fun… oh shit," Joru replied, as she looked out the doorway of the Kyzil City police station. Adjusting his officer's hat, he smacked a member of dispatch on the back of the head. "Get an ambulance **_and_** coroner down here now. Hard to tell with some of those alien species, yeah?" Joru turned back to his fellow officer. "Anolise, what do we know about our John Doe?"

"He's got ID; thirty-eight years old, Kaden Keck, wife Hikaru Keck. Lombax, so this guy's **_gotta_** be a far way from home. Infant son; no official record on the name. I'm guessing the kitten is actually his **_kid_** , way too well behaved to be a pet, and it looks kinda like him, don't it?"

"No name record on the kid?"

"Just did a quick run on his species. Lombax, native to Polaris, highly insular felids. Few leave Lombax- controlled space. Superstitious bunch, too. Don't name their kids on paper till their first birthday. Kid's just in as **_Tobi_** \- kinda a placeholder male name before they're named for real- so he really **_is_** just a John Doe. Or John Keck as the case may be. Guy's got a note, too… it's in something I can't make out as well as Polaris standard… mine's a bit rusty, but I can at least type it into a translator. Might be a suicide note, or instructions, or something. Beats me." Anolise shrugged her shoulders, and picked up the tiny kit, dressed in a plain red robe tied with a brown sash at the midsection.

Joru shook his head. "Get on it. For now, **_someone's_** gotta take the kid home until we can get him some papers and in an orphanage."

"My mom's allergic to cats," Anolise said, "otherwise, I'd be taking home this puffball in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I'm taking care of her, so…"

Joru grunted. "If nobody can take the furball, I can take him in for a night or two. Wife's always wanted a kid."

xXx

Anolise's notes in hand, Joru trudged back up the steps to his front door, unlocked it, and set the kit down. Baxter, his own half-blind old crumptofox ran to meet them at entry, slobbering Joru's leg before sniffing his John Doe, and giving a good lick. The yellow orange puff of fur, practically half ears, giggled like a Veldin child, before purring like an animal.

Oddly, the child had not been diapered, and was a lot older than he looked, just a few days shy of a year. Meaning he actually knew some commands in his own language already, and, if Anolise was correct, already sharper than most Veldinite kindergarteners, if not as verbal.

"Baxter, show our new friend where the litterbox is, come on," Joru cooed. The old ball of fluff proudly trotted to the first floor bathroom, the lombax following curiously on all fours.

Baxter reached the litterbox, sat next to it, barking happily, and Tobi (the poor kid really needed a **_name_** ) perked his ears high, like he knew what to do.

"Thank goodness," Joru said aloud, watching as the kid stood up on his rear legs, hiked up his robe, and…

Jumped up to the toilet.

The kid grinned, sat down, did his business, wiped himself, flushed, and jumped from the toilet to sink, turning on the taps and washing his hands (with **_soap from the soap pump, no less_** ), before looking up at Joru expectantly.

"Good… job?" Joru asked, as the kid jumped down, and resumed being on all fours, purring and rubbing his face against Joru's leg.

This was going to be a **_weird_** few days.

* * *

 ** _Sprinkler System_**

"Ahahahahaha!" Piotr yelled, holding up the end of the sprinkler system, drenching Ratchet with it. The mixture of water and Veldin dust turned Ratchet's soft yellow-brown fur to a rusty, muddy, clumpy red. Piotr and three more orphans ran off, back under the shade away from the blazing midday heat, where they laughed their hides off about the sopping wet cat.

"Jus' look at the furbutt. He's mad," Jot snarked out in between wheezes of snickering.

"What's he gonna do, scratch me?" Piotr replied. "They take him to the **_vet_** to get his nails clipped! Bwahahaha! Shoulda put him in an animal shelt- **_ow!_** " Piotr reeled from the smack to the back of his head. A lithe Veldin woman with an impressive amount of muscle stood behind him, towering.

"Is there a problem with vets, kid?" she boomed.

"No, Miss Bolide," Piotr replied, hastily.

"Ahem."

"Mrs. Bolide?"

"Keep going."

" ** _Doctor_** Bolide."

"There you go. Now **_scram_** ," she said, and the three boys hurried inside the orphanage. Ratchet turned around, shook himself out, and grinned.

"Hi Doc Hu."

"What did they do **_this_** time?" Hulia Bolide said, shaking her head. "I was on my way to go check on Jerri's livestock. His bouffalant is supposed to give birth this afternoon, and, from my truck, I see those three morons chasing after you with dustballs and the sprinkler system for the date trees."

"They think I hate getting wet," Ratchet replied, grinning wider, showing a loose canine. "'N they think with all my fur that I don't like being out in the sun."

"I would say get cleaned up, but, hey, short stack, want to ditch here for the afternoon and get covered in birthing fluid? I could use the extra hands and you need a tooth pulled, too."

"Really?" Ratchet said, grinning. "I'm supposed to be in biology in fifteen minutes."

"I'd consider this a better alternative, wouldn't you? C'mon, let me go talk some sense into your teacher. You're already breezing through your classes anyway."

"Sweet."

xXx

Ratchet leaned out the window of the open hovertruck, the last bits of dust whipped out of his fur from the gusts around the mesa, though his clothes were still stained deep red.

"You're going to be twelve soon," Hulia finally said, breaking the silence.

"Yeah."

"You're going to be moved to a state funded boarding school."

"I know."

"Is that what you want?"

"Not really."

"You want to build ships."

"You think?" Ratchet replied, turning to face Hulia as she made a sharp turn down to the valley, red mesa replaced with carefully controlled and watered agriculture.

"Legally I can't adopt you, Ratchet," Hulia said, sighing.

"I know, I know," Ratchet replied, trying to brush it off. "Jezza's allergic to me. And when she's a legal adult, and you could reapply, I'll be sixteen and out of the system. It sucks."

"I can still sponsor you, I basically already have."

Ratchet's ears drooped. "That's not going to change much, other than the state saying that you have to pay for my books and clothes, instead of the taxpayers. Oh, they'll take your money, fine, but one of your daughters sneezing around me and I'm **_'unfit to be your son'_**. Appreciate the gift, Hu, really, but it doesn't change anything. Maybe when I'm in prep school the other kids won't be so…"

Hulia sighed into the wheel, shaking her head. "You are **_way_** too young to be worried about things like this, and you **_know_** it. But no, there's a loophole. If you started an apprenticeship… I talked to my husband's brother. He'll take you on, if you want it. You won't be able to stay in our house or take our last name, but…"

"Grimroth? He really wants me?" Ratchet replied, cutting off Hulia with wide eyes and sneezing into his elbow, a mixture of red dust and snot smearing on his fur. "Thought he didn't like me."

"You know what I say about **_assuming_**."

"Makes an ass out of you and me," Ratchet replied, before coughing a little, and spitting out the loose tooth, holding the canine to her peripheral vision.

"One less thing to do today," Hulia mumbled, as she slowed down the vehicle and parked at the edge of the property, turning to face Ratchet proper. "He's just rough around the edges, but he won't stop talking about that mag-lev suspension you built. You've got the raw talent. You could be a top-notch mechanic. And there's a nice spot on the mesa he's been eyeing for a workshop and garage. If we get a prefab, you'll have your own place by your birthday. You'd be our son in everything but name… if you wanted it."

"Are you serious?" Ratchet asked, whistling through the hole between his molar and incisor.

Hulia smiled and Ratchet pulled her into the tightest hug of her life. "Keep on forgetting how strong you are, fuzzy," she said, returning the hug before both pulled away, Hulia now dusted with damp red dirt as well.

"All right, get into a haz-mat suit," she chided, as she tied his ears loosely together so they would fit into the helmet, and his tail up his back to fit into the suit. "After we're done, a shower for you and Grimroth will take you to order some proper welding gear. You need steel toed shoes and some padded gloves, an apron, and a mask. You're going to need some special orders," she added, as she carefully guided his five fingers into a Veldin three-fingered haz-mat glove.

"I always need special orders," he replied, kicking the ground with his foot.

"Maybe you'll fly out there and meet some other lombaxes someday, huh?" Hulia said, sliding the helmet down over his head before putting on her own. "Why do the boys think you hate water and heat, anyway? If they actually paid attention in biology, they'd know feet like yours are great for walking over sinking sands or swimming, or that your ears are natural heatsinks."

"Oh, they don't give a toad's rear end about science," Ratchet replied, muffled through the helmet.

"And that's why you're going to be amazing someday, and they'll be serving fries at Galaxy Burger. C'mon, we have a pregnant cow that needs us."

xXx

Ratchet surfaced to the top of the cistern near his garage, shaking his head-fur free of water and paddling to the edge.

"You are not supposed to be exerting yourself, Ratchet. Remember what Doctor Hulia said," a tinny voice admonished from the ground below.

"Swimming isn't exactly **_exerting myself_** , Clank," Ratchet said, flipping around in the water to show off his massive flat feet.

"You are going to have to reapply the salve," Clank replied, annoyed. "You haven't even returned home yet. Why did you rush straight here?"

"I needed to clear my head, and I like the water," Ratchet countered, carefully pulling himself, sopping wet, from the open metal pool.

"You are going to get fur in everyone's drinking water."

"No, this tank's mine," Ratchet replied, taking the crane down to ground level, and pointing at a painted warning, **_G & R, REPAIR, REPLACEMENT, AND REBUILDING; GREYWATER_**. "It's rain runoff. We use it to refill ship coolant tanks. Not for drinking, but safe to swim."

"You're also avoiding going back to your house, aren't you?"

"Possibly…" Ratchet said sheepishly, leaning against the cistern's reinforced side, swinging his feet back and forth to move the crane's jumper seat like a playground set.

Clank turned to look out at the mesa, and the nearby garage, (mostly) unharmed. "Well, there's still a giant piece of Drek's robotic armor blocking the entryway, anyhow." Clank shook his head. "Is there possibly room for one more up there?"

"Water's good, and the tank's huge," Ratchet said, stopping his nervous rocking and patting the jumper seat in the crane, starting it back up once Clank settled alongside.

Clank grinned with his eyes, sending a quick texted message to Hulia, as well as additional copies for one Teegan Albedo and one Kala Mev.

 ** _He's occupied. You have time to set up for the congratulatory party._**

 ** _And, please… do have some towels and a change of clothing handy._**

* * *

 ** _Dog Barks_**

Ratchet side-eyed Suzie and the rest of the Tharpod children. Suzie certainly recognized Ratchet as a Lombax, but the rest of the group of scouts were confused by the pair, to Ratchet's chagrin.

"Which one of you is the critter?" a squat boy finally piped up.

"You're like a critter-Tharpod pair from another planet, right?" another asked.

"It's the fuzzy one!"

"But there are feathered critters, they're not all fuzzy," another cried back.

Ratchet raised an eyebrow, but Clank turned his head, winked quickly at Ratchet, and then barked loudly at the group of children, before clamoring on Ratchet's back, howling.

"I told you it's always the littler, cuter one!" one girl grumbled. "But do you listen to me? **_Nooooooo_**! Not all critters are fuzzy!"

"Thanks, pal," Ratchet whispered, tipping his head back just so.

"Anytime. I do say; that was actually quite fun! E-he-he-he-he!"

* * *

Wow, those were long!

 ** _PLEASE SUBMIT PROMPTS._**

For the curious: most last names and ship names in Ratchet and Clank (Copernicus **_Quark/Qwark_** , Alister **_Azimuth_** , Talwyn **_Apogee_** , **_Aphelion_** , etc.) are all named after astrophysics concepts. I kept this up with my additions:

Kaden/Hikaru **_Keck_** : the **_Keck observatory_** in Hawai'i, which contain a pair of telescopes- the world's largest optical and infrared telescopes

Hulia **_Bolide_** : a **_bolide_** is an extremely bright meteor that explodes in the atmosphere

Teegan **_Albedo_** : an **_albedo_** is the fraction of solar energy reflected from a planet back into space

Kala **_Mev_** : one **_MeV_** equals 1.6 x 10-13 joules (so it's a unit of ener


	5. Chapter 5

Jak put up some more prompts, so I will be using those for this chapter and the next few, and combing through suggestions in the comments for the future. But right now, I have over 20 prompts to do, so I think I'm good on suggestions, though I still LOVE feedback. Please comment if you have something to say!

To my beta- take your time. And if you can't read these all, it really isn't the end of the world. (I don't know why energy got cut off, by the way).

Hikaru and Tobi (the lombax placeholder name I made up, since Alister, despite being Ratchet's father's best friend, didn't seem to know his birth name, so I made up the 'superstition' bit to clear up cannon issues) are Japanese… but different kanji than the Tobi from Naruto.

Hikaru means light (as in light-years), and Tobi means flight. I thought they were fitting, given the way most last names are picked in the actual games. Azimuth's in particular is interesting- it refers to an eastward bearing object in the sky. In the ACiT final battle, you'll notice, he always walks eastward to Ratchet- or ** _counter clockwise_** ** _. To turn back time_**. Nice little detail, Insomniac. A++.

One of the comment prompts was for shedding, which I already wrote about. Go check out **_Shave_**!

I have a few other Ratchet fanfics as well- **_Ailuraphobia_** is a collection of shorts like this one, but, instead of cat behavior as prompts, each short is named after (and relates to) a planet from the first Ratchet and Clank game. This story is complete.

 ** _The Universe Has an Odd Sense of Humor_** is a cannon-divergence fic, set immediately after **_A Crack in Time_** , and deals with the aftermath of the broken clock. It is also complete.

 ** _Shave_** is just pure fluff, about Ratchet shedding; it's done too.

 ** _Right Twice a Day_** is a post **_Into the Nexus_** fic about what happens after one of Nefarious's harebrained schemes actually works. It's ongoing.

 ** _Balbalis Nox_** is a continuation of the Lombax Nip story. It's only begun!

ONWARDS!

* * *

 ** _Treats_**

Talwyn's hands started innocently enough, a few light scratches at the spot where Ratchet's ear met the side of his head. Ratchet, as he'd aged and learned a bit more about his species, had come to accept some of his quirks, no longer being so uncomfortable about hiding his purr in the presence of people he knew. Knowing that he was twenty-four and still due for another Lombax growth spurt didn't hurt either, as he leaned into Talwyn, his throat letting out the soft sound of an idling engine.

Her hand trailed down to the back of his neck, near his scruff, and she scratched near the fold of fur. Normally this spot had a heavy armor plate, plus Clank's head usually rested against it- and for very good reason.

"May I?" Tal asked, rubbing circles near the spot. Ratchet purred louder in response, and made sure most of his weight was centered on the couch.

Talwyn rolled back his shirt collar, and pulled on the scruff sharply. Immediately, Ratchet turned to jelly, every muscle in his body relaxing in evolutionary response.

"You need to go get a proper massage," she chided, looking at him. "This doesn't actually do anything for you, long term."

"Tried," Ratchet replied, shaking his fur out and pushing himself upright. "They treat me like a Cazar and end up pulling something. Clank walking on my back only does so much."

"Am I like the only person in the universe who has a basic understanding of Lombax anatomy? It's not **_that_** difficult."

"Well, Hulia…" Ratchet replied sheepishly. "And Croid."

"Yeah, asking your vet-slash-sort-of-mom for a backrub sounds like Oedipus waiting to happen. And I totally understand you wanting a restraining order on Croid."

"He's not bad, honestly, but no. I don't need him muttering " ** _Fascinating_**!" at me while he's trying to crack my back."

Talwyn sighed. "All right, fluffy. Flip over and shirt off. "

"You sure? I don't want to incon-"

"You get a massage and I get to actually put some of this dusty knowledge my dad told me to use. Win-win."

Ratchet unhooked his harness for Clank, then felt along the side of his work shirt for the invisible zipper, separating the garment and pulling it off sideways, revealing near-white tummy fur and thick stripes along his sides and back.

"Winter coat?" Talwyn asked.

"Yeah, seems to synch with Metropolis weather. Guess since it's where we stay the mo-oh holy," Ratchet cried, as Talwyn began assaulting his back with an elbow, before blinking. "Wow. I can actually rotate my shoulder!"

"Just sit still and stop thrashing my butt with your tail, or I'll staple it to the couch."

"What did I do to deserve this?" Ratchet asked, an impossible mix of appreciation and horror, as his purring resumed in full force, Talwyn having discarded her own work gloves to knead Ratchet's overworked deltoid.

"You scratch my back, I scratch yours?" Tal replied, digging in hard with her thumb on an impressively stiff knot.

"Ah, I knew this didn't co-mph!- free."

"Fair's fair."

"Fine by me, but a fair warning- I haven't clipped my claws in two weeks."

Talwyn frowned, as she took to his other shoulder.

"Call it a treat then. But you **_owe_** me."

* * *

 ** _Hissing_**

The hissing noise was low, and would have been inaudible, had Ratchet not had lombax hearing. Quickly, he popped his rebreather over his face, before cursing quietly.

"What is wrong?" Clank asked worriedly.

"There's a minor leak in the airlock," Ratchet replied as calmly as he was able. " I can hear it, but I don't know where it's coming from. If I can't find it and plug the hole… ugh. I am not wearing a decompression suit," Ratchet muttered, as he weighed his options before he decided to run frantically through the Phoenix back towards his own quarters to get one on before the crack became a hole ( ** _became a space decompression nightmare_** ), bumping into a familiar overall-wearing Novailian on the way.

"Oh, pardon me, boys, I have a leak to repair," he replied with a wave. "Gotta hurry, you know? Corporate charges extra for these kinds of emergencies."

"I just…" Ratchet started, before popping the rebreather back off.

"I think I need a **_nap_**. Clank, can you wake me when that crazy plumber stops appearing **_exactly before we are going to die_**?"

"I may have to put you in cryo-sleep for such a request, Ratchet."

* * *

 ** _Not Responding to His Own Name_**

 _"He could just be called Tobi…" Officer Joru Cepheid commented, lazily tapping his three fingers along the police desk._

 _"Are you crazy? That's like naming your son Boy. You don't_ _ **do**_ _that," Anolise replied, exasperated, as she pooled over the files on hand. "Plus, we have in his father's own writing that the kid is not to take his name. It's hard to tell if it's the last name, or full, but the executor's wishes need to be addressed."_

 _"He doesn't respond to anything," Joru grumbled, shaking his head._

 _"He probably only understands Lombax."_

 _"And we…?"_

 _"You find me someone in Solana fluent in Lombax, sure. We're millions of light years away from anyone who can speak it, and I can't find anything reliable online. They probably have it on some sort of intranet. Lombaxes are genius inventors, but incredibly wary of outsiders after that deal with the Cragmites from years ago."_

 _"Crag…?" one of the dispatch officers asked as he passed by._

 _"Was I the_ _ **only**_ _person to pay attention in galactic history in high school?" Anolise asked the district office, to a beat of silence. "Okay, fine. But he needs something. Maybe if I pull up a Polaris baby-book and try some common ones we can see what he reacts to?"_

 _"Meh, worth a-" Joru started, before seeing a jolly, overweight Novalian swinging his wrench in a hand_

 _"Heya boss," the man said grinning. "Found your problem."_

 _"Never caught your name, sir," Joru said, jolted from his current discussing by both the maintenance man and the tiny lombax perched awkwardly in his police hat, pawing at the felt._

 _"Ah, don't mind me, I'm just the plumber," the Novialian responded. "You have an issue in the pipes, I'm sent to fix it. So, ya might want to tell your dispatch droids to be a bit more careful doing their oil change. One of 'em musta accidentally dropped this down the sink," he added, holding up a serial-number marked cogwheel with a strange set of hooks laser etched around the edges._

 _"Ratchet," the Plumber offered, in explanation, to Joru and Anolise. "It's a ratchet commonly found in Blarg police robots. You have a few, dontcha, on the… oh, hi there, little fella."_

 _The three looked dumbfounded as the small lombax, often on all fours and sleeping most of the day, had jumped off of Joru's head and stood on two legs, tail swishing madly to maintain balance, at the plumber's feet._

 _"Well what do ya know. Haven't seen a Lombax in ages," the plumber said, reaching down to pat the toddler on the head._

 _Anolise looked between the plumber and the child. "Ratchet," she said simply, and the little ball of gold whipped to her, walking on his hind legs and standing at attention next to her desk._

 _"Seems he does have a name already," Joru said. "A really weird one, but a name."_

 _"Anolise smiled and picked up the kit. "Awwww. Ratchet it is."_

X

Lombax language lessons- or more specifically, time where Ratchet and Clank only spoke in Lombax to one another (and Talwyn)- were becoming the norm in the Ratchet household, to the point where the two spoke almost exclusively Lombax to one another. From a practical standpoint it made sense; it was a dead language in this universe, and with the exception of a few very particular sources like IRIS and the ruins left behind, the Lombaxes didn't leave much of their culture when they moved to a new universe. Which meant that Ratchet and Clank could separate to cover more ground and yammer battlefield strategy until they were blue in the face; their enemies couldn't guess what they were planning in the slightest.

"Ratchet. Rah chit ic!" Clank yelled, as he strafed sideways to pull a crank at the top of an old military shelter so Ratchet could slip inside.

Both froze for a minute, before breaking out into laughter simultaneously, Ratchet slipping back into Solana standard from losing his train of thought.

"Holy… all this time. The orphanage told me it was the only thing I responded to, so it must have been my name…" Ratchet wheezed with laughter into the commlink as he ran to meet with his best friend. " As a kid I… I must have thought they were asking **_'come here'_**?!"

* * *

 ** _Sleeping on Keyboards_**

"IRIS…" Ratchet mumbled, pawing at the hammock in Ratchet and Clank's new workshop on Fastoon, hastily set up to have a base of operations in Polaris when they didn't want to bother Talwyn.

Clank poked his head up from his recharging station on top of a shelving unit to look downwards at the sleeping lombax. Ratchet, while dreaming, was both a sleeptalker and occasionally somnambulist, something Clank was sadly aware to be partially his fault.

Ratchet was still pawing in his sleep, but making no move to leave his bed, strung just off the ground to mimic the sway of a low altitude hover but high enough to just barely raise his back off the floor with a mattress under for both catnaps and extra precaution against sleepwalking. Satisfied, Clank began the process of settling himself back into sleep mode, before noticing that Ratchet was pawing his netting with a weird sort of purpose.

Clank blinked, curious, and mentally overlaid a keyboard map over where Ratchet's ungloved fingers ticked away at an imaginary keyboard, coming up gibberish.

"Wait, IRIS, no. You can't tell me that's all you know about him!" Ratchet cried, pounding at the nonexistent keyboard.

 ** _Oh dear_** , Clank thought. This wasn't a mere dream, it was a nightmare; Ratchet must have been looking for Clank. Clank popped open the top shutter on his cranial dome, releasing his propeller to gently glide down next to Ratchet. As usual, Ratchet's tendency to grab in his sleep took over, taking Clank in his arms. Ratchet relaxed, tail lazily hanging over the edge of the hammock, as he rolled into a soundless slumber. Clank dulled his optics, settling in to reassure his organic partner if needed.

X

Ratchet licked his lips and wet his dried out nose with the tip of his tongue before realizing his death grip on the little robot beside him.

"Oof. How bad was it?" Ratchet asked. "You recorded it, right? Croid is trying to find a pattern, see if he can help me cut down on them."

Clank brightened his optics to their normal levels and nodded. "No sleepwalking; you were crying out to IRIS and pounding away on her keyboard."

"Oh, I remember that one… but it wasn't a nightmare. Thanks for coming down though."

"It looked like one to me," Clank said, stretching out and rolling off the hammock, bouncing on the mattress below.

"Huh. Weird. I was just complaining to her that I'd listened to all the interviews he did about building the Alpha Disruptor." Ratchet shrugged, rolling out of bed to do his morning run.

Clank watched him leave towards the desert, jogging in nothing but his sleeping pants and hookshot, as he rewound the recording from the night before. When he saw Ratchet stretch out his fingers to type, this time he overlaid a different keyboard map- Lombax- and suddenly the gibberish he thought he'd seen from the night before made much more sense.

 ** _Please, IRIS, download all information on Kaden._**

* * *

 ** _Meowing in the Early Hours of the Morning_**

Ratchet never tried to get onto local time, once he'd become a spacer. He stuck with Meero City ( ** _Metropolis_** , he corrected internally, at its more common designation) standard for his body, and kept a haptic feedback watch for important things like when he could refuel, or when stores and restaurants would be open locally. Sometimes, he'd arrive on Luminopolis at two in the afternoon, when the nocturnal residents were sound asleep. Sometimes he'd land at Apogee Station at 6AM local, when Talwyn was still in a nightgown, chasing him out to the terrarium so she could make herself presentable because Ratchet didn't bother to check the time. Once, he was lucky enough to touch down on Marcadia just as Sasha was about to pull her skiff out of dock, but getting the right time was an incredibly rare occurrence.

Normally, Ratchet worked around this- grabbing traditional breakfast foods from a greasy diner just before he was going to bed, or hitting up a nightclub to unwind first thing in his morning if that's when night actually was locally, filling in the rest of the hours planetside as he could.

And this was how Ratchet ended up going for a 3AM 'morning' run in just some work pants, one of Angela's oversized Megacorp tee shirts he'd forgotten to return, and his hoverboots through Meridian City. The last calls of many of the bars and clubs in the entertainment district were audible out through to the streets, and Ratchet picked up his pace to avoid the last throngs of locals and tourists alike heading for cabs or busses.

Ratchet paused under a streetlight, waiting for low-atmo traffic to die down as the regular hover vehicles flew in the lanes overhead.

"Mrow!" Ratchet heard dully, over the din of traffic and his Courtney Gears playlist.

Meowing like that meant only one thing- a Cazar girl was unsuccessfully being hit on by someone. Ratchet whipped around, pulling out an earbud to better get a grasp of the situation (and intervene if necessary), only to come face-to-face with three Markazian men directly behind him.

"Hey, short stack. I don't know what species you are or what planet you're from, but if you have a door, I've got the key to the best night of your life."

Ratchet just blinked. Were these drunk guys hitting on **_him_**?

 ** _Badly_**?

"Come on, now. We don't bite… unless you ask for it," said the second one. Ratchet smelled the odor of booze off their shirts and breath, and probably still might if they'd been two hundred kliks downwind.

The third one grinned lecherously, pulling ratchet's tail end. "Y'know, my tail is bigger than yours. And I'm taking about the one that's not sticking out the back of my pants."

Ratchet shuddered. Facing down Leviathans was child's play to him at this point. But he was genuinely frightened. Sure, he could probably sock one in the face, but it was three-on-one and he didn't even have his wrench. He could flee, he realized, as he observed the pedestrian streets behind him, but these guys would just start targeting someone else. And if all three decided to grapple-

"Hey assholes, knock it off," bellowed a deep voice, followed in kind by a giant Angorian in a polo with a club logo. "You do that again and you ain't welcome within a twenty-klik radius of here. **_Scram_**!"

One of the three gave Ratchet a final once-over with his eyes before all three scattered like buckshot.

"Hey. Sorry about that," the bouncer said, shrugging. "You over 22?"

"Yeah."

"Whoa, hey. Speak up, man," the bouncer replied, wide eyed.

"Yeah, I'm old enough to drink, why?"

"Holy… Was going to get you some drink coupons as an apology, but… you're not Ratchet are you? Didn't recognize you out of your armor. Saw you on the holos. Man, maybe I shouldn't have said anything and watched you clobber those three, huh?"

Ratchet shrugged and shook his head. "Meh. I'll never turn down help."

The bouncer pulled out a card from his pocket, passing it to Ratchet. "Next time you come round, order's on the house. Now get lost before more drunk idiots decide to cross you."

"You got it…?" Ratchet said with an expectant uptick in his voice.

"Trig."

"You got it, Trig," Ratchet replied, pocketing the card and kicking his hoverboots into gear.

He'd finish his run over in the residential district, thanks.

* * *

 ** _Climbing Something and Not Being Able to Come Down_**

"Well…"

"Please refrain from saying it."

"We're **_fucked_**."

"You did hear my warning, did you not?"

Ratchet peered over the narrow ledge, looking down. Clank had run clean out of gelatonium, and his right propeller was busted beyond Ratchet's ability to repair in the wilderness. Jumping down from the sheer cliff face was tantamount to suicide.

Clank folded up his butterfly wings neatly into his chassis, and pulled his arms back out, flipping his fingers to propellers and looking forlornly at his right hand, as if he could will the blades whole again.

"Hey, Clank."

"Yes?" he replied, as he hopped off Ratchet's back and sat at his side.

"Does the propeller on your head still work?"

"I believe it does," he responded, popping open his microbot transmitter and using the single blade set to hover gently in midair.

"That means you can get down on your own. The one can support your weight, right?"

"I **_will. not. leave. you. here_** ," Clank replied firmly.

"Ugh, don't be a hero. Fly down, get within range of Aphelion, and ping her. You can fly her in atmo, right?"

"I feel confident in doing so, however-"

"No buts."

" ** _At my maximum speed of walking_** ," Clank cut back in, "it will take me approximately fifteen standard hours to get within range of her, and that is if I am lucky enough to not run into any of the wildlife. I cannot hoverboot; I cannot even run half as fast as you."

"So? I can wait. Better than trying to ping passing ships for a lift. This place is uninhabited."

Clank looked Ratchet over gently, before nodding and jumping from the ledge.

"Seeya later, tin can!" Ratchet shouted down.

"Please do not waste your energy," Clank replied over Ratchet's ear comm. "We will lose radio contact in about five hours time, but why don't you tell me some of the stories Alister told you while I move?"

"Sounds like a plan," Ratchet replied, as he stretched out on top of the tiny flat area, pulling a protein bar from his matter compressor, ripping the foil open with his teeth. He had all the time in the universe.


	6. Chapter 6

**_Mirrors_**

Ratchet had always been too short to see the mirrors in the orphanage; part of it was that he barely walked on two legs until he was five, and the other part was just how unbelievably **_tiny_** he was. The first time he'd been tall enough, and standing upright, to see his reflection in the mirror, he was stunned. He knew he was different than the other people in the orphanage; he had fur, a tail, and they did not. He was sent to a vet for a broken leg, for a haircut; they went to the hospital, to the barber's.

He'd been told that he was like a Cazar, all the kids had been shown pictures of them when they were old enough to start teasing. A Cazar woman had even come in once to talk about her city on a far off planet called Arcadia.

 ** _Why wasn't he on Arcadia?_**

The teasing was still there, it didn't go away, but now it was simply that he wasn't a Veldinite, and it helped. Cazar children's shows were mixed in with the holorecordings they would watch during the rainy season.

And then he saw himself in the mirror and understood why the teasing never stopped. He had fur and a tail, yes. But that was where the similarities between himself and Cazars ended. Cazars weren't stripey, their ears were not as long has his, the snout different. And he was still so **_small_**.

X

Clank pulled the metal sheets behind him on a hoversledge, and began instructing the Agents of Doom Ratchet had released in helping set up the prefab they'd brought to Fastoon. Ratchet and Talwyn, meanwhile, had gone off through the city ruins to salvage anything useable or fixable for the workshop to come.

"The heck is this?" Ratchet asked, picking up a strange device, dangling precariously together by a wire. He already had ten guesses in his head, plus fifteen more mental blueprints for weapons he could turn it into.

"It's an **_egg beater_** ," Talwyn said, sighing. "I think this ruin was someone's kitchen. Dad always told me kitchens were on the highest level of Lombax residences so the house wouldn't get too hot. She pointed at a shaft, and opened it. "See? Here's the dumbwaiter, so things could be sent down to the dining room we saw downstairs. The kitchen was supposed to be well ventilated, and wasn't air conditioned just due to electricity use- and Lombaxes like the heat anyway. Air conditioned buildings were usually for public spaces where non-Lombaxes were more likely to be."

"Smart."

"M-hmmm. Wait. I'm surprised you didn't recognize what an eggbeater was. They're pretty much the same no matter where you go."

"On Veldin, the only eggs people ate were snake. And they were usually broken raw directly over hot rice, and cooked over-easy on top from the steam. A sprinkle of salt, and breakfast."

"Remind me never to eat your cooking, then," Talwyn said with a laugh, as she pulled out some gadgets from under the counter.

"Don't knock it 'till you've tried it," Ratchet replied. "I never had bird meat until coming to Polaris, so…" Ratchet shrugged. "I'll need to cook for myself out here, so anything useful you find, tell me. I'm going to go raid the bedrooms. Whoever lived here isn't using this stuff, anyway."

"Just remember what I told you," Talwyn admonished, holding out a metal ladle from a dilapidated drawer.

"Watch the floors for structural damage, photograph everything, and GPS tag the stuff. Jewelry, art, and personal photographs should be sent to Igliak for proper preservation," Ratchet said, sighing. "I know. And yet, I still feel like I'm grave robbing."

"The lombaxes clearly had some time to gather things before leaving; that last house had stains on the walls where photos or art had once been, and a typed and laminated note with photographs telling archaeologists about the family that had lived there. They had at least a day to set aside what they wanted, by the looks of it," Talwyn replied, as she dug back through the cabinets. "I'd say at this point, anything left here is fair game."

"And by the state of this house," Ratchet countered, as he examined the dumbwaiter again before opening the hatch to go down below, "I don't think this family ever **_left_**. I think Tachyon got them."

Talwyn frowned. "I didn't want to say so… but yeah. **_Probably_**. Which is why sending their stuff to be preserved is the best we can do. And anything you can use… it's better than leaving it here to rot."

"I guess."

Ratchet wrinkled the end of his snout and slipped down from the kitchen/attic to the hallway they'd passed over before, sliding open a door to what he realized was an untouched master bedroom. Ratchet called his floating camera over to take a 360 hologram of the room, and carefully tread inside; staying on the support beams and avoided the sagging section of floor in the center. A bookshelf of twenty-something-years untouched books… he recognized a few, now. A Tondoori religious text, one of the major faiths of the lombaxes. _The Engineer's Compendia_ , a college level basic math and science principles book that most households owned. A few popular novels.

Thankfully, the stone construction of the buildings and the dry heat of Fastoon meant things were in exceptionally good condition, and this side of the building hadn't been shelled from Tachyon's attack like the half with the kitchen.

It was then that Ratchet noticed it. The wall of photographs. A small one on the left he recognized- it was of Kaden and Alister. Another of Alister holding a small chld to it's left, next to the bookshelf. For a brief moment, Ratchet thought this must have been Alister's home, but a cursory scan of the other five photos on the wall of varying sizes were of Kaden and a tall black-furred white striped lady, a giant one of them in ochre robes Ratchet recognized as wedding clothing, another one of the woman in a hospital bed holding a tiny bundle of yellow fur with pride…

 ** _This was my…_**

 ** _This…_**

 ** _My house._**

"TALWYYYYYYYYYYYN!" Ratchet screamed, falling to the floor in shock. The heavy fall loosened a pin from the wall behind him, sending the armoire mirror crashing to the ground. By a stroke of luck (or, more likely, lombax materials science), the mirror hadn't cracked as it crashed to the ground, and Ratchet turned around to see it, making sure nothing else in what would have been his home remained undamaged.

Angled upwards from the fall, Ratchet peered into the mirror, looking like a giant with his own parent's smiling wedding portrait hanging on the wall behind him.

Talwyn carefully jetted into the room, floating just above the ground so as to not potentially disrupt the ancient flooring further. Ratchet simply pointed to the wall of photos behind him.

"How…" Ratchet sputtered out. "How… how much do you think… it would cost.. t…t…t… to fix this place up?"

"I think we can pull a few favors for the hero of Polaris, right?" Talwyn said, helping Ratchet to his feet, and pulling him into a hug, while still floating barely above the stone.

"Can we stop looting my house now?" he replied in the tiniest of voices. "I want Clank to see…"

"Yeah. Let's get out of here. I'll put in a few calls," Talwyn responded, as she jetted out the room, to the hallway, and down the stairs.

Ratchet turned back to the mirror, wiping the tears from his face. With the ghosts of his parents behind him, he looked so **_big_** now.

* * *

 ** _Aquariums_**

"Tal… why do you need my clothing size for a date? **_And_** my shoe size?"

"Reasons," she said, grinning back over the holocall. "Wear whatever you like. You **_won't_** be in it for too long," she added before hanging up.

Ratchet sat and blinked at the screen for a few moments, hearing Clank's distinct laugh from another room.

That night, after shaking out his fur, Talwyn's date idea of couple's scuba lessons at the local aquarium was a pretty awesome date idea, though not at all what he'd been expecting.

* * *

 ** _Dislike of Baths When He Doesn't Need Them_**

"I can do this myself," Ratchet muttered, trying to pull the bottle of dye from Clank's hands. "Not that I really want to, but I can."

"This dye is caustic. **_No_**. I can sterilize myself when done, you cannot. I will administer it."

Ratchet gritted his teeth, and mumbled a 'fine' before disrobing in the bathroom, looking at the clothing and helmet Sasha had left for him. Sasha had a point that using a Hologuise on this mission was a bad idea; the enemies had excellent tech-scans and he'd be a dead giveaway in a minute. But he looked enough like a Cazar that with some black fur dye, contacts, and the helmet (with hidden slots in the foam interior to discreetly slip his ears inside), he could pass pretty well, and hopefully go unrecognized. Clank took the helmet in his hands to match the fur color of the fake ears sticking out the top with what would soon be Ratchet's own hue, and began spraying down one annoyed, wet felid.

"You do realize I am going to have to shave away most of that long fur at the end of your tail, yes?" Clank asked, as he slowly combed in the ammonia-smelling liquid. "Unless you would like to have your head shot off when someone sees you from behind."

Ratchet ground his teeth and pinched his nose shut. This was going to be longer and more embarrassing than he anticipated.

X

Ratchet didn't know how long he'd dozed off (it was sometime after he'd moved from the tub to sit leaning inwards on a chair so Clank could dye his back and tail), but the sound of a blow dryer woke him right up.

"Everything is done, sleepy-head," Clank said, kindly. "I gave you a quick trim as well. And it seems as though the dye has set properly, too. Dry off and get dressed. I can call Talwyn from an untraced line and see if she recognizes you once you are done."

"Good idea," Ratchet said, yawning, as he curled his tail, now only a rope, into view. He missed his tail poof already, as he slipped on the Marcadian military garments, before finally applying the aqua-tinted contacts and sliding his ears into the helmet. His hearing was a bit muffled, but no more so than some of his own armored hemls, spinning around to take stock of himself in the mirror. A perky blue-eyed Cazar stared back at him, fur gradating from blacks to lighter greys around his snout, and Clank was right, not just about the caustic ammonia dye; he would have just bathed in the black color and looked fake when done. Ratchet was actually impressed at the dye job; there were small sections of greying fur throughout and he'd even carefully threaded some false whiskers to his snout and around his eyes.

Ratchet finished, slipping his hands carefully into three-fingered gloves he hadn't worn since living on Veldin, shook out his fur and tail, and peeked open the door to the bathroom.

"Well?" he asked.

"If you do something about your voice," Clank replied, nodding at Ratchet's face, "I don't think even Hulia would recognize you. Oh, did you take a look at yourself before putting on the helmet, by any chance?"

"No… why?"

"Ehehehehe…" Clank replied, grinning.

" ** _What did you do to me while I was asleep_**?" Ratchet demanded.

"Just go see," Clank replied with a wave of his hand.

Ratchet scrunched up his nose in disgust and closed the bathroom door, pulling off the helmet. The fur on his ears, hidden by the foam, had not been dyed black.

Instead, they were white with maroon stripes.

Ratchet quietly slid the helmet back on, becoming Cazar again, sniffling a bit.

" ** _Damn contacts_** ," he muttered to no one. "Always make me tear up."

* * *

 ** _Paper Bags_**

"Thank Qwark for that dumbwaiter," Ratchet muttered, leaning into some furniture as he pushed it all to one side of the room.

"And the winch system," Clank added, from down the hallway.

"Yeah, but the dumbwaiter just had a broken hatch in the attic- but was otherwise in good working order. I had to **_fix_** the winch system first," Ratchet countered, as he carefully rolled the armoire from his family's master bedroom to the bay window, opening it, and rolling the armoire right out the window to the winch, while Clank packed up the smaller items into boxes that fit neatly in the dumbwaiter, sending them down to the first floor. As soon as they finished emptying the house of its contents, the restoration team could get to work making the Fastoon home livable again. Given the overall good construction, it would only be a month or so before they had a real home on Fastoon. **_His_** home.

Technically, his parent's, but still.

X

Ratchet and Clank, after moving the furniture to another house down the street, sorted the smaller boxes and paper bags onto a hoversledge and dragged it down to their prefab garage on the mesa. Ratchet prepared a simple stew and left it to simmer, while he, Clank, and Talwyn began sorting through the mass of paperwork before them.

"Birth certificates are going to be on light blue acid-free heirloom paper," Talwyn said, as she sorted through some books. "ID paperwork will be on off white or cream. They probably had their ID cards on them or…"

"Keck," Clank interjected, cutting off Talwyn and holding up a certificate. "Your parent's marriage certificate. Your mother's name was Hikaru. Your family name is Keck."

"Hey, I like Bolide," Ratchet replied, holding out his hand to see the paper himself. It was hand scripted in lombax; Ratchet could see where the "e" in Kaden had been slightly smudged.

"I did not know you had a family name already," Talwyn replied.

"Since I was never officially adopted, it's just listed as X," Ratchet replied. "But I used Hulia's last name if I needed to."

"You could go down to the registrar's and have it altered, either way," Clank replied.

"Technically, as you have a Zoni soul, you qualify as a living creature yourself," Ratchet replied, tearing open another bag of documents. "You could apply for a family name, too."

"If you take one, I will take the same," Clank said, nonchalantly as he leafed through a photo album, scanning in the photographs with a hand-scanner.

"Huh."

"What's up, Ratchet?" Talwyn asked, peeking over to what Ratchet was looking at.

"I think these are tax documents. Uh, _del za tuc_ is a clothes designer, right?" he asked, flipping the ream of paperwork towards Talwyn.

" _Del za tuc_ _ **de muc'lau**_ ," she corrected, reading the text. "Fashion design, jewelry specialty. Looks like your mom owned a small business, designing… oh. oh, crap."

Ratchet held an expression of abject horror. When Talwyn says 'oh crap,' he mused, the appropriate response is to run as fast as possible.

Talwyn backtracked, shaking her hands in front of her face. "Nonononono…no. Not like that! It's just… your mom… I knew her."

"She would have died when you and I were still infants," Ratchet replied, cocking an ear and eyebrow.

"Well, not directly," she said pointing to her ear, or more specifically, her earring. "Look at the business name. It's Spindle and Silver."

Ratchet blinked in surprise. "Whoah." Even **_he_** knew Spindle and Silver. His cufflinks were Spindle, and one of the few things his dad left behind… or really his mother, too. He wondered if they were bespoke. He left then haphazardly in a drawer back in Meero City, maybe he should get them polished, appraised and…

"She mostly did men's jewelry though," Talwyn said, forcing Ratchet out of his thoughts. "Someone else took over when she passed, I suppose, but if your family had stock…"

"You would be quite wealthy, Ratchet," Clank said, as he continued copying photographs.

"I wonder if she had any designs in the works," Talwyn said.

"If they were anywhere, they would be in the boxes marked 'workshop'," Clank helpfully provided. "I assumed the desk was your father's, but it may have been your mother's metalworking tools that I had packed."

"Thanks, pal," Ratchet said, pacing around the garage until he found the stack of boxes and paper bags. He pulled off a glove with his teeth, slicing open the tape with a claw before putting the leather back over his hand.

"Whoah…" he said, looking down at the intricate silverwork Clank had packed.

"Those are _Spindle_ all right…" Talwyn said. "That box alone is worth millions."

"The heck are these?" Ratchet replied, holding up one of the pieces with care.

"Ear clips," Talwyn replied. "Like I said, she did mostly men's jewelry. Here, give it."

Ratchet passed her the finely wrought clip, and she gently tugged on his ear.

"Hold still, this will sting for a moment."

"What, no, sterilize it first! It's been out for- hey, ow!" he cried, as she clipped the silver to the bottom center of his ear. He wiggled the appendage in irritation.

"It's not like an earring; it clips on, not punctures through," Talwyn replied. "And now, you're probably worth more than the entire contents of the Lombax wing at the Meridian City museum. Here."

Ratchet looked at the holoscreen that Talwyn shoved in his face as a makeshift mirror, carefully turning his ear. The piece understood Lombax fur length, and the patterning and contrasting color was perfect; a set of snowflake obsidian stones in the shape of droplets of water hung suspended in the sliverwork.

"Probably meant for a light-furred lombax like your father, she was known to use white gold and moonstones on ones for dark fur," Talwyn commented.

"Or **_you_** ," Clank commented. "If either of you would have bothered to read the paperwork set aside with it. Your mother made this… for you." He held up the paper bag that the tax documents had been packed in. "These pieces are all numbered and labeled. Why don't we stop for the evening and parse through everything?"

Ratchet looked at himself one more time in the holoscreen before rubbing the piece of jewelry and nodding to Tal and Clank.

"I'd like that."

* * *

 ** _Loud Noises_**

Ratchet buried the pillow over his head and groaned.

"I can't tell if those are gunshots or fireworks," he whined.

"Do not be silly, Ratchet. Fireworks are illegal on this planet."


	7. Chapter 7

Thank you all for the continued reviews and support! You're the reason I write!

I needed some more lighthearted ones after last chapter, soooo… well. There are a few here. Still some more depressing stuff though. I don't know. Ratchet's youth wasn't exactly the best, given what we can see in the older games.

Also Nefarious! I love writing him, and haven't really had him (or Qwark, for that matter) in here at all. Time to fix that.

* * *

 ** _Sleeping Under the Bed_**

Hulia had given eight-year-old Ratchet, on his first major growth spurt and **_finally_** just shy of a cubit, some warm milk and a thick blanket, carrying him curled up to the kennel half of the animal hospital to rest after his checkup and grooming. Her assistant was already tasked with sweeping up the pile of white, gold and brown lombax fur left behind after his trim.

Ratchet smiled and curled up in his blissful slumber; he never admitted it, even as an honest child, but he seemed to love getting groomed, whereas Hulia knew from experience that most of the animals she treated barely tolerated it; some even needed to be sedated to get their fur cut and styled. As a Veldinite, she had no hair to speak of, just scales, but if she remembered anything from her time on Kerwan for her veterinary license it was that furred people, like Cazars, enjoyed the process; there were spas on planets like Marcadia for a full day of bathing in hot springs, a massage, and fur styling for men and women alike.

With local bureaucratic tape preventing her from truly taking Ratchet out of the orphanage system, Hulia sighed and laid a clean pet bed on the floor of the kennel for Ratchet to rest in. She did the best she could, given the circumstances, and gave Ratchet a few last strokes with a wire brush for good measure.

How was this better for everyone than her eldest daughter sneezing on occasion (something an antihistamine could easily fix, and something Kyana willingly wished to take) when Ratchet came by?

* * *

 ** _Tackling Someone to Wake Them Up_**

"RATCHEEEEEE- **_oooooh Lance, I wish I could love you, hold you, forever…but!"_**

 ** _"But what?"_**

 ** _"I… I have become… a zombie!"_**

 ** _"Oh Janice, it was…"_**

"Ratchet, do you plan on sitting there with popcorn for the rest of the afternoon listening to Lance and Janice reruns?" Clank asked sarcastically as Ratchet stretched out on the floor of Nefarious's lair, tail unfurled behind him as he relaxed, listening to Nefarious malfunction.

"Meh. It's your turn anyway."

"Very well," Clank replied, propelling himself up to Nefarious's height and giving his head a solid thwack.

"EEEEET! Oh, hello idiots," Nefarious said, cocking a grin.

Ratchet raised an eyebrow. "That's eighty two minutes between outbursts," he commented, holding up his holoreceiver. "You sure you don't want me in there? I'd bet a thousand bolts you just have a loose wire in there. A bit of soldier and you won't have this problem nearly as often."

"I'm not letting some squishy touch my cranial sisterboards," Nefarious sneered. "I just need some more control."

"Well, I have to admit, you've definitely improved," Ratchet replied. "Suit yourself. But if I wanted to do some brain surgery, I'd check the wires around the auxiliary memory cartridge. Just saying. Won't totally solve it, but it should help you reboot yourself in future outbursts."

"You're not going to mess with my head?" Nefraious snarled.

"I wouldn't dream of it," Ratchet replied. "It's just the hardware, and I owe you one. I won't touch your processors at all. Honestly, software isn't my dig, anyway."

"Can I be awake?" Nefraious asked, grinding his jaw in contemplation as his tone lightened just a hair.

"As long as you have at least one other memory chip, yeah."

Nefarious snorted. "I'll go get my toolkit. But no funny business, squishy, or I'll throw you right out the airlock."

* * *

 ** _Hanging Out in a Neighbor's Garden_**

"Punk's been stealing my discarded parts again," Grimroth grumbled around the dinner table as he passed his brother Gaius some rice.

"Are you using them?" Hulia asked, as she took a plate of frog meat out from under her husband's nose.

"Tell the kid I'm leavin' 'em out on purpose to see what he does with 'em, and I'll have your head, sis," Grimroth shot back, playfully, snatching the frogs back from Hulia the moment she slid one on her plate.

"Why don't you invite him over?" Hulia asked, cocking her head, as she helped one of her daughters cut her frog into bite-sized pieces.

"I don' wanna be the town creep or nuttin'. But, damn, the kid's got skill. He made a workin' grappling hook with nothin' but scrap, his claws, and a screwdriver I actually forgot about in the yard- my favorite, too. Anyway, it's less than a month 'till he's twelve anyway. You pass him my offer?"

"I was planning on stopping over tomorrow, Roth, but why won't you tell him?"

"The kid likes you."

" ** _If_** you actually talked to him, he might like you, too."

* * *

 ** _Meowing Just to Get Attention_**

"MrrrrRRoOoow." Ratchet whipped around, and looked at Qwark behind him attempting to whistle innocently.

Ratchet wasn't sure what was worse, the fact that Qwark thought that he could get away with the display, or the fact that Ratchet understood the meaning of the sound perfectly.

"The **_heck_** was that?" Ratchet finally asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Clank said you were finally getting the hang of lombax, so I wanted to test you. Ah, in my youth I-"

"Joy," Ratchet said cutting him off, reminding himself that Qwark, of all people, was somehow fluent in lombax. "How did **_you_** even learn it anyway?"

"Well, **_you're_** not the only orphan," Qwark said, pouting. "I was sent away to boarding school. On Fastoon. Thirty-something years ago."

Ratchet frowned. How could he forget Qwark also had lost his parents at infancy? It was uncomfortably weird how similar the two of them actually were at times.

"Waitasec. **_You_** were on Fastoon as a teenager?" Ratchet pondered further. " ** _Nefarious_** was on Fastoon as a teenager?"

Qwark stopped and gulped. "Hey, don't look at me, I graduated ten years before the lombaxes just… vanished. I kept in touch with some of my old classmates, and one day, the lombaxes just stopped writing back. I was getting pretty busy with the whole heroism thing… and it was a **_boarding school_** so it was a mix of people from a whole lot of planets…"

Ratchet shook his head. "Whatever. The past's in the past now, right?"

"That's right, cadet!" Qwark whooped, lifting Ratchet clear up and onto a shoulder.

"Ya puc'noi da ic!" **_Put me down!_** Ratchet cried out, fur ruffled. Quark let him off his shoulder and beamed.

"So you really are understanding," Qwark replied. "Illa zei de ar." **_That's good to hear._**

"Just… do me a favor and **_never_** use that meow again."

"What? Why? I think it would be a great secret code! Like a bird call!"

"I am not allowing you to call me that. **_Ever_**. Code name or otherwise." Ratchet shuddered horribly. "I **_really_** don't want to explain the meaning of that to Clank." Ratchet rolled his eyes and trudged ahead. The fact that Qwark learned lombax as a teenager made his choice in vocabulary… well, certainly more interesting, to say the least.

* * *

 ** _Falling Off Tables_**

"Just a sec, Tal, I'll have that light fixed in an- **_OOOOOOW_**!" Talwyn and Clank heard a mighty crash, and Ratchet's meowing whine, as they both ran into the main atrium where Ratchet was doing some maintenance.

Clank quickly scanned Ratchet for injuries, and produced a vial of high-acting violet nanotech to repair a fractured collarbone. Listening to the devices repair Ratchet with an almost lunch-heaving squelch (saying something since Clank never **_had_** lunch), Ratchet laid prostrate on the floor until the bone was repaired.

"I swear, the table moved," Ratchet whined, as he heard the light tinkling noise of the nanobots completing their task.

"Ratchet, tables are inanimate objects and do not simply…" Clank started, stopping short, when the table in question backed up further, and embarrassingly curled up in the corner of the atrium. Clank squinted, his replacement for sighing.

"Let us find you a non-sapient stepladder, shall we?"

* * *

 ** _Active in the Dead of Night_**

 ** _It's always night in space_** , Ratchet mused, as he flattened the pilot's seat in Aphelion and curled up while she ran autopilot. He listened to the trail end of General Azimuth's latest request as he curled in the cockpit, ten Zoni giggling and floating around him in balls of light. One peered down at Ratchet as he tried to make himself comfortable.

"We are returning to Sire," they all said in unison.

"Soon," Ratchet, replied wearily. Another looked down at the lombax, and floated into his arms. Ratchet took it warily, hugging it like a stuffed animal. As a being of pure energy, the little creature had no heartbeat, but it began mimicking Ratchet's pulse and all of the Zoni surrounding him dimmed themselves as Aphelion dimmed her own cockpit lights. The Zoni was unsurprisingly warm, but surprisingly soft, gripping Ratchet tightly.

"We are retuning to Sire," they repeated, quietly, almost as if they were trying to calm Ratchet to sleep.

It was night when he slept. It was night again when he woke.

"We are retuning to sire," they monotoned to gently wake up Ratchet, slowly brightening themselves.

Hopefully the Great Clock had a nice warm sun; without Clank, Ratchet desperately needed a dawn.

* * *

 ** _Crescent Pupils_**

"Is it wrong of me that I enjoy dilating your eyes?" Hulia asked with a small smile to help ease Ratchet, as a small swarm of ophthalmologists surrounded him with their tools.

Ratchet's face fell. "Just be glad I owe you one. Well, a **_lot_** of ones," Ratchet replied, as he attempted to keep his eyes open while each of the doctors got a look. "Croid?" he finally sighed out, allowing the tharpod to force his eyelids open with his pincers.

Ratchet felt wet tears streak down his face as he sat uncomfortably in the paper-backed chair, tail squashed against his back as Hulia completed her examination while the other doctors observed. The minute she lowered her clipboard, Croid released his hold, and Ratchet squeezed his eyes shut, crying hard from the dilation, pin lights, and lack of blinking.

"Go rest up, Ratchet," Hulia said, kindly. "I'll be talking about what these results mean to the other doctors, and I'll give you your prescription later."

"Mph," Ratchet grumbled, as Croid offered him an arm to a bed in another room. Ratchet closed the door, shut the light, stripped down to shorts, and curled up on the guest cot, drifting to sleep.

X

A light rap on the door.

"Ratchet?"

"Mph."

"I'll come back later," Hulia said quietly.

"No, I don't really want to sleep all day," Ratchet mumbled in response. "Just… uh, keep the light off when you come in."

"You did well," Hulia said, cracking open the door and sliding herself in. She fumbled around Croid's guest room, before finding the cot, sitting down next to Ratchet.

"It's just an eye exam," Ratchet mumbled. "It's not like it's even needles or anything." He groaned into a pillow. "I can fall from a five-story building and just fracture something, but this **_kills_** me. Fastoon is crazy-bright, why can't I handle that much light in my eyes?"

"It's because lombaxes are nocturnal, Ratchet. You know how well you can see in the dark. Did you not notice that there wasn't a single ambient light fixture anywhere in those city ruins?" Hulia helped Ratchet sit up, feeling his hot fur press against her scales and seeing the reflection in his now crescent-shaped eyes in the near darkness. "And it seems to me like someone is long overdue for a trim."

Ratchet growled. "Why didn't you tell me? Why do I just learn everything second or third hand now that I'm an adult?" His tail twitched in irritation, before softening slightly. "Sorry, Hu, didn't mean to yell at you."

"Well, as a child, what would you have done knowing you were supposed to be nocturnal?"

"It wouldn't really have changed much," Ratchet sighed, sitting upright as Hulia reached out in an awkward hug that he accepted, curling his tail around Hulia's back on the cot. "I would have still been on the same schedule as everyone else. It just bothers me, you know? Purring. Having this weird want to be groomed or petted. Just, little habits and tics. Now that I'm older, I'm seeing that this is just because of my species and not some weird thing unique to me. I just really wish I got to talk more to Angela before she vanished. Heck. I didn't even know she was a lombax herself back then."

"Angela?" Hulia asked, holding him gently and offering a few light ear scratches, listening quietly to Ratchet's breathing and heartbeat slow down to a relaxed state.

"Another lombax that stayed behind in this dimension. She was- **_is_** \- about fifteen years older, so she's almost forty now. Talwyn's father helped get her to the dimension with the lombaxes, _and the only other two who stayed behind when the Dimensionator was used_ …" Ratchet paused, digging his head into Hulia's shoulder, as she offered another hand to stroke the top of his head. "I guess I'm number one on Polaris's endangered species list, then, huh? But yeah… I didn't even realize that female lombaxes looked like her until Talwyn showed me some old photos. I guess I never bothered to look or ask."

"If she left, for the other dimension, I mean, you could," Hulia mused quietly, listening to the start of Ratchet's purr and feeling it through his neck pressed on her shoulder.

"I'unno. I mean, if I did, Tal and Clank would probably go with me. But… I'm worried about everyone else?"

"You don't have to worry about other people, Ratchet. You've done plenty of that already. Honestly… you've done three galaxies a world of service, and inspired many to join their respective defense forces. I'm not saying we'd be fine without you, but… you've started the ball rolling on better, more responsible intergalactic defense and talks between the galaxies and races that barely existed before. **_And I couldn't be prouder_**."

"But you…"

"Owe me **_nothing_**. Circumstances notwithstanding, Ratchet, **_you. Are. My. Son._** I would move galaxies for you. Heck, honestly, the rest of my kids have left the nest long ago. Maybe it's time you did so, too? Stop trying to clear out this invisible ledger you've put up in your mind about things you owe me for. If you really must, saving Veldin thrice over- my home, **_our home_** \- should have cleared that up."

"Are you…"

"Ratchet, if you want to stay here, it should be because you **_want_** to, not that you **_need_** to."

Ratchet squeezed a little tighter. "Let me let my eyes adjust a bit longer. Then… then I'd like a shave, if it's okay... **_mom_**. After… I might call up Tal and Clank about, y'know… a little road trip."

"Fair deal, fuzzball. I'll go bring those numbers to Croid so he can make you some contacts. And I'll ask if he can add in a slight tint, too. Come out whenever you're ready."

"Sounds good."

X

"Is he all right?" Clank asked off the commlink from Igliak, head currently separated from the main chassis body as one of Al's RoboShack Polaris-branch employees was digging around in his insides. Clank seemed nonplussed about being spread into seven different parts on the workbench, remotely flexing his right hand's fingers, sitting a few cubits away on an opposing table in the background.

"Well, he's not scattered over several benches with one leg in a pair of clamps," Hulia replied.

"Pipe down, tryin'a work here," one of the mechanics muttered.

"I do recall your a'cappella rendition of Courtney Gear's most recent single, **_Grind My Gears_** , not five minutes earlier. Please do not be hypocritical," Clank said calmly. The mechanic blushed and suddenly found Clank's fuel ignition system exceedingly fascinating, busying himself again in his work. "Anyway…" Clank began, directing himself towards Hulia.

"You were correct, and have an excellent eye," Hulia responded, crossing her arms. "He's developed a minor form of myopia, easily correctible. From what literature I can gather, it's fairly common in lombaxes who spend too much time out in daylight."

"That is good to hear. He has been relying on me for sight more and more of late, but only on observing distant objects. Is it reversible?"

"Yes, but it's not something I feel confident or comfortable doing. He'd need surgery. **_Lombax specific_** surgery. When he wakes up proper I'll bring it up to him. Croid is likely the only person in the universe I'd even suggest, but…"

"I do think it is about time for us to be moving on to other places, anyway," Clank said, wincing slightly and raising his voice a few decibels. " ** _Sir_** , just because I do not have pain receptors does not mean I wish to be manhandled as such. Please be a little more careful."

" ** _As long as you keep him out of trouble, Clank_**."

"I cannot make any promises on that end, Doctor Bolide. I can only attempt to try."


	8. Chapter 8

By the way. Qwark being fluent in Lombax is in fact **_cannon_** ( ** _All 4 One_** , for those wondering). He's also said to have been an orphan, but that was in **_Size Matters_** , which is not considered a cannon **_Ratchet and Clank_** game. I ran with it anyway.

And yes, I'm building something of an internal cannon with these stories. :) Which means that what happened at the end of last chapter will be integrated into some of the future stories, in the same way that Ratchet's childhood stories have become integrated into the larger set of shorts.

I've made this entire chapter on this topic exactly, just because I was so motivated. Future ones will be a mix, but I needed it out of my system. :)

* * *

 ** _Landing on His Feet_**

Ratchet boxed up the last of his things; his birth certificate, the crate of unsold jewelry prototypes his mother had made (save the ear clip meant for him and a simple steel watchband, both of which he'd taken to wearing regularly), a few photographs. It was a mix of personal belongings and things to sell; Ratchet had bolts to spare, but he'd been concerned that the currency the lombaxes now used wasn't the same anymore. Between his items and Talwyn's, they had a hoversledge at the ready; the single largest items being Ratchet's and Talwyn's suits of Carbonox armor, squashed into crates with regular clothing rolled inside to both pad out the boxes and efficiently use the limited space.

 ** _Better to be prepared_**.

"Are you coming, Ratchet?" Clank asked, peeking up into Ratchet's old bedroom on the second floor of the garage. The two ships Grimroth had been working on were parked outside, turning the garage space into an open party room.

"I… kinda just want to get this over with," Ratchet said, sheepishly, as Clank propelled himself all the way up to the rafters and around to Ratchet's old living space, marveling at the collection of old posters and knickknacks he'd acquired- a small amount from his time at the orphanages, but most in the four years he'd lived and worked with Grimroth before leaving Veldin behind.

"Are you planning on taking any of this with us?" Clank asked, tilting his head.

"Other than Alister's wrench?" Ratchet countered, looking at the old weapon carefully hung up on a pegboard. "No, not really. I'm going to box it all up tomorrow, bring the toys and board games down to the charity shelter and toss the rest. I have digital copies of my photos… I don't need anything else here, really."

Clank rested a hand on his chin. "I suppose."

"It's just stuff. Heck, I'm only bringing the wrench as proof I knew Alister. That thing is really too darn heavy."

Clank nodded. "Shall we, then? Grimroth roasted something in the fire pit."

"Oh yeah, I can smell it from here. That's a thing I'll miss for sure," Ratchet said, smiling, as he hefted Clank on his back, taking a running leap out of his room and over the banister. Clank popped open his propellers in surprise, slowly lowering the pair to the ground below.

"Way to make an entrance, short stack," Hulia said, cuffing him on the ear. "You nearly gave me a heart attack."

"I always wanted to do that," Ratchet replied sheepishly. "Figured I'd do it tonight, since Roth can't ground m-"

"Like hell I can," came a booming voice. Ratchet spun around, ears flicked upwards.

"Now you're stuck here," Grimroth boomed, hefting Ratchet (and by extension, Clank) onto a shoulder. "No running off for you tonight. You are homebound for it, y'hear me, you little rat?"

"Oh, dear, **_look_** at what you have done," Clank droned, sarcastically.

"I **_know_** ," Ratchet replied. "Guess I'll **_have_** to stick around, eat delicious barbecue, and talk to friends."

"Such a terrible, terrible punishment," Grimroth commented, as he carried the pair over to the entrance where the pit was situated. "Looks like you're stuck in time out for a while," he added, as he let them down, shoving a plate in Ratchet's hands.

* * *

 ** _Walking on Thin Spaces_**

Ratchet pulled the unwieldy apparatus off his head, looking down. He could see the faint traces of the lombax city that Tachyon had shown him eight years ago, on the other side of some cliffs where the Dimensionator felt prudent to open the portal. Ratchet frowned. It looked like a day's walk out, easily.

"Ratchet, it is not to stay here," Clank advised, holding out his hand to take the Dimensionator. "We should be keeping it with us." He tugged on Ratchet's arm, as Talwyn quickly pushed their belongings through the shimmering portal before stepping through herself. Ratchet passed the device off to Clank, who compressed it into his matter storage before pulling Ratchet along with him.

Ratchet turned and smiled, squeezing Hulia's and Sasha's hands one more time before disappearing completely though the shimmer, just as he heard Qwark blow the longest nose blow of his life.

"Okay, thank goodness for your timing, pal," Ratchet said as soon as the portal closed behind, holding up his fingers in a pinching motion. "We were **_this_** close to being on the receiving end of collateral snot damage."

" ** _Thank you_** for the mental image," Talwyn grumbled out in lombax.

Ratchet blinked, then replied in the language himself. "Yeah, that's going to take a while to get out of my head. Let's move."

Each of the three grabbed a pull bar for the hover sledge, pulling it along behind them around a narrow crevasse in the mountain's cliff face watching as the sun faded fast in the horizon.

"Light for your head?" Ratchet asked Talwyn, who laughed at the stilted choice of words.

"Headlamp," she corrected in lombax, stopping to fish through their belongings for the device, offering one to Ratchet as well.

"Actually, I'm good," he replied, leaning against the grey stone cliff behind him, adjusting his eyes to the stars and moonlight, looking at the city off in the distance, dotted with only the occasional street light, dim, so not to blot out the natural evening light. "Wonder if they've named any new star patterns," Ratchet commented, looking back up at the sky.

" ** _Constellations_** ," Clank corrected.

"Are both of you going to gang up on me every time there's a word in lombax I don't know?"

"Yes," Talwyn said with a small smile.

"Of course," Clank intoned, with a chuckle at the end.

Once Talwyn fitted the headpiece, they resumed a slow pace down the footholds, occasionally shimmying sideways long narrow passages with the sledge barely on the path. Eventually, they reached an extremely narrow gap, and Ratchet frowned.

"Time to unload," he muttered, strapping as much of their belongings as he could carry to himself, before hoverbooting down the ledge, removing the supplies, and jumping back up for more. Between himself and Talwyn (with Clank helping load things on them), it took five trips to bring the supplies to a lower ledge, before the three of them looked between each other.

"You know, it would probably be faster if we just brought everything down to ground level this way," Ratchet commented. "Clank, if you've got the gelatonium, we could just fly straight back up and get everything all the way to the bottom in a half hour."

"I thought cats **_liked_** narrow footfalls," Tal joked.

* * *

 ** _Fighting With Other Felines_**

It was just after sunrise when the city wall began to tower overhead, and Talwyn was beginning to feel fatigue.

"Hot," she said, panting. "I don't even want to think what this place is going to be like midday."

"No joke," Ratchet responded. "Looks like you're going to have to learn how to be nocturnal."

"Oh, nooooo," Talwyn whined sarcastically. "But how will I get my luxurious tan?"

"Tal, **_you don't tan_** ," Ratchet deadpanned, whistling at the sheer size of the gates ahead.

"Actually," she replied, a bit more seriously, "this **_is_** me tan. I don't get enough sunlight, and, like most Markazians my skin starts turning pur-oh shit."

Talwyn dodged a beam of light, shot from a turret up on the wall. Ratchet perked his ears, hearing the device charge for another shot.

" ** _HOLD_**!" he screamed in lombax, hoping that someone was manning the device, or, at the very least, the turret itself was self-aware. He held his arms up, and Talwyn and Clank did the same. "We're not looking for a fight!"

A black-and white furred lombax peeked his (or her, it was difficult to tell from the height) head out from behind the turret, hidden behind a helmet with only the ears poking out. He (definitely a he; the lombax had a tail), stood in plain view while two other turrets popped out of the wall alongside, manned by two more lombaxes, a male and a female, in identical armor.

"I am Talwyn Apogee," Tal shouted. "Daughter of Max Apogee. If he's here, he can vouch for me."

"And I'm Ratchet Bolide. My parents were Kaden and Hikaru Keck, both deceased. If Angela Cross is in the city, she can confirm who I am. I also have some of my mother's jewelry designs, my birth certificate, and their marriage papers."

"Marriage license," Talwyn hissed at him, shaking her head.

The lombax that had initially fired upon Talwyn leaned over, to the side of his turret.

"Get out," he gruffed.

"I… what?" Ratchet asked, backing a good step backwards.

"You're not welcome here. Didn't you read the sign on the way, idiot?"

"But that's…" Ratchet started, before the Lombax guard made a hand symbol, and the other two on turrets fired wide, missing Ratchet, Clank and Talwyn, likely on purpose as a warning.

"You have until the count of five, and then I'll tell them to vaporize you. Leave your things and go."

"But…"

"Five."

Ratchet scooped up Clank, and the Lombax signaled again, turret shots arcing wide.

"I said **_leave your things_**. Nothing but the clothes on your backs. Four."

"Not leaving him," Ratchet responded, glaring hard, and holding Clank tightly.

"Then you'll die here. Three."

Clank wiggled out of Ratchet's grasp, and sat on a sledge, narrowing his eyes at Ratchet. Ratchet knew that glare. Clank was telling him to **_go_**.

Ratchet shrunk, as he heard the turrets power up again.

"Two," the guard intoned. Talwyn grabbed Ratchet by the scruff, forcing all his muscles to jelly, subduing him completely and slinging him on her shoulders piggyback, hitting her thrusters on her jetpack hard before Ratchet recovered.

As he regained his senses from the scruff pull, Ratchet could faintly hear the turrets power down in the distance, and began cursing loudly in Blargian the entire ride to some nearby dunes.

* * *

 ** _Scratching Posts_**

" ** _GRAAAAAAAAAAAH_**!" Ratchet screamed at no one in particular, ripping at a nearby sign in the desert, listing waymarkers. Talwyn stood, arms crossed, watching him vent, pounding, scraping, and denting the post until the blazing heat began catching up to him.

Feeling sweat begin to pool in his hand and footpads, Ratchet stopped, growled low and sunk to the ground next to the post.

"There were some caves we passed not too far from here. Let's go seek some shelter," Talwyn said, placing a light hand on Ratchet's shoulder.

Ratchet looked up at the sign, now bent at an odd angle. "Hey, Tal. So it looks like there's three cities… A Mei'luc City, an Inrau City and a Denglu City…. but what's 'qar a puc'loi' mean? Maybe we can go to one of the other ones and actually get some freaking help."

Talwyn carefully leaned over, confirming Ratchet had read the sign properly, and then helped him to his feet, muttering.

"Dad always told me lombaxes were 'shoot first ask questions later' and a combo of being both a bit **_too_** trigger happy for their own good as well as assuming most people knew what they did- and got mad when they didn't…."

Ratchet blinked, shaking out his fur and trying to look at Talwyn through the desert glare. " ** _Huh_**?" he asked, confused.

"Qar a puc'loi is a quarantine area, Ratchet," Clank said, over the comms, through to the nav unit strapped to his wrist alongside his mother's wristband. Ratchet immediately grew back to his full height and perked his ears. "As I am aware from quite the extensive experience…" Clank continued over the voice communicator, as Ratchet and Talwyn heard a distinct background hum, "lombaxes tend to be… brash, for lack of a better word. Those signs were apparently littered over the desert to not come within 50 kliks of a city without a clean bill of heath or face a firing squad. We missed all of them, I am afraid, and nearly were blasted to smithereens by the latter. It is only that you mentioned whom you were that they did not vaporize you on the spot, considering the possible detriment to public health you would be. I have already sorted out the situation; our belongings and I are in an irradiation chamber. **_You_** need to go to the quarantine area for a few days. Then you can come back."

Ratchet sighed deeply, feeling the creep of the sun and reading the directions to the quarantine site on the dented and nearly shattered waypoint.

"How much do I owe them for a broken sign?"

* * *

 ** _Sleeping All Day_**

Clank shook his head in the small dark chamber; sitting on one of Talwyn's quilts wrapped in a ball, and closed his eyes. He was to be stuck in the chamber for the next two hundred hours for full sterilization. He set his program to sleep, with an override for incoming transmissions or a direct call of his name, shutting himself down to minimize the time he had to be utterly alone.

X

"Hey pal," Ratchet hissed. Clank blinked and spoke aloud.

"Hello Ratchet. It has been…" he stopped, counting the cycles since entering sleep mode, "seventeen hours. How are you faring?"

"The food here is really weird," Ratchet replied sheepishly.

"This is traditional lombax preserved food," Clank heard Tal retort from a distance behind. "Dad made some on occasion… though they've definitely swapped out some ingredients for what they could source here, it seems."

"What is wrong with it?" Clank asked, amused.

"It's so dry," Ratchet replied. "Dried fruit, dried meat, seeds…"

"Jerkies are easier to prepare in a desert environment and can be stored for long periods without spoiling," Clank chuckled.

"I just want a burger. Or a salad."

"Shhhhh, Ratchet don't say the 's' word around Lombaxes," Talwyn hissed, hiding a giggle in her tone. "Or Lomabx made robotic nurses, as the case may be" she added.

Clank shook his head, scraping his antenna on the top of the irradiation chamber, considering Ratchet and Talwyn being attended to by a bunch of Doppelbangers in scrubs.

"You doing okay, pal?" Ratchet asked, snapping Clank out of a daydream.

"I have my sleep mode activated; I am only to wake upon my name being called, the commlink activated, or a sudden change in environmental conditions. One of the soldiers woke me over the PA system about six hours ago to make sure I did not require anything, but I would prefer not to sit and stew while awake for eight days of decontamination."

"As long as you're good pal, I'll keep the comms to a minimum. See you in like, a week?"

"Yes, see you soon, Ratchet."

X

"Hey, pal."

Clank blinked. "It has been… fifty hours. How have your last two days been?"

"Lots of needles, even more checkups. Apparently I have a taurine deficiency."

"You should eat more raw meat."

"Eugh, gross."

Clank laughed. "There are pills you can take, as well as it being an energy drink additive, although I would advise against the latter."

"They offered to fix my eyesight problem," Ratchet said, perking up slightly. "Said it was a combination of not enough taurine and too much time in daylight."

"How much will it cost?" Clank asked, tilting his head.

"They use bolts, so I'm not concerned about that. We've got more than enough."

"Is there an issue, then?" Clank knew there was an issue; he could hear it in Ratchet's voice.

"It's eye surgery…" Ratchet replied sheepishly. "I'd…"

"If it is not deemed an emergency, you should request the operation after we are reunited, then."

"Thanks, pal."

X

"Clank, there is a mad robot with an electric razor. Save me."

"You are fine, you clearly have enough time to contact me."

"Well, that's because Talwyn is getting a flea and tick spray now. I'm next. And they said they are going to have to shave my fur."

"It will grow back, Ratchet. Just remain out of the sun until then."

"I was calling for sympathy, not you taking their side!"

"Do you wish to spread foreign mites to this environment?"

"But… but I'm gross and naked without my fur!"

"You haven't had a grooming in months, Ratchet. Honestly, you need one."

X

"Hey Clank."

"Yes?"

"When they said **_shave_** , they didn't mean **_everything_**. Just short, since I'm on my winter coat right now, and its way to hot for that here. And the tick removal was like this giant Jacuzzi. Was actually pretty relaxing."

"Thank you for the status update." Clank chuckled a bit to himself. Ratchet was **_hopeless_** without him. If Talwyn hadn't been there as some sort of grounding, well…

X

"Clank?"

Clank shot awake. The voice was not Ratchet's.

"Yes?" Clank asked, after pressing the small intercom button on the corner of the irradiation chamber.

"Your friends have taken all their immunizations, and have the approval of the medibots to be cleared for entry. They are on their way."

"Thank you for the information, Miss…"

"Lucina," the white furred Lombax replied sternly.

"I have…" Clank started, before counting the cycles since going into sleep mode the previous time. "Approximately six more hours, yes?"

"Go back to sleep. They'll be here when you wake."


End file.
